Celebrity endorsements used to mean attempting to have some of celebrities’ popularity transferred to the product being pitched. The message was, “I like this, you like me, so you should like this, too.”

That’s changing. Social channels have enabled celebrities to have deeper engagement with their fans. Brand endorsement now has the potential to be more participatory and mutually beneficial, with celebrities influencing brands on behalf of their social connections and brands helping celebrities grow their influence through positive exposure in the brands’ social activities.

J.R. Johnson is a veteran entrepreneur and Founder/CEO of the social travel site and app Trippy. Trippy is targeted to a social media savvy audience and helps them exchange travel information with their friends.

To raise Trippy’s profile and provide diverse, engaging content for its users, Johnson created an advisory board comprised of celebrities such as Rachel Zoe, Jason Mraz, Tim Ferriss, Kevin Rose, Anthony Bourdain, Gary Vaynerchuk, Randi Zuckerberg, Soleil Moon Frye, Andrew Zimmern, Chase Jarvis and more.

Johnson is using a new model for celebrity endorsements that asks endorsers to invest their time and reputation in ways legacy endorsement ads don’t. These “friends of Trippy” share and discuss their favorite travel destinations, with many also advising on the business’s day-to-day planning.

Among the takeaways from this discussion with Johnson On Social Celebrity Endorsements:

• Having celebrities using and talking about your brand to help “spread the word” is only part of what they can do for you
• It’s important for celebrity advocates to have close social connections with their fans, so that the endorsed brand may better leverage those connections
• Brands should identify celebrity endorsers for whom their products are a good fit
• The right celebrities for a small or local brand need not have widespread fame — seek those who can, or already are, connected to your customers

this convo is sponsored by

Convo at the PowWow is presented by Social Media Today, offering the Web’s best thinkers on business and public policy. Social Media Today is arapidly-growing community of blogs, webinars, e-books, moderated Tweet chats and other digital content. The community currently includes more than 1,800 bloggers and 100,000 registered members, attracting about 700,000 monthly visits.

Vitrue, an original Facebook Preferred Developer Consultant, is the leading social marketing platform facilitating relationships between brands and their fans across multiple social networks via its software-as-a-service solutions. Social marketers and agencies world-wide use Vitrue’s Social Relationship Management (SRM) platform and its Publisher, Tabs, Shop and Analytics products.

Brandwatch is one of the world’s leading social media monitoring and analysis tools, with offices in the UK, US, Germany and Brazil. Global brands and agencies use our tool to cut through the noise on the social web and find the conversation that matters, empowering decisions that improve their business.
Production assistance by Craig Klein of Modern Voice. Music by Glenn Phillips.