“My Mom Is Better For Your Brand Than Tiger Woods”

Let’s face it not very many of us are ever going to be in a position to spend millions of dollars on a celebrity endorsement of our product or service (even GM decided that they couldn’t or wouldn’t foot the bill to put Tiger Woods behind the wheel of one of their cars) but regardless of the size of your company, your Tiger Woods is out there, you just need to find him (or her). Let me explain.

Tiger Woods is undeniably one of the most recognizable people in the world and having him drink Gatorade in a commercial or sport a Nike golf shirt on a Sunday is absolutely noticable, but is it an effective spend of resources? While Tiger may be dynamite with a 3 iron, none of us really believe that drinking Gatorade or wearing a Nike swoosh is going to get us out of the sand trap, but if you actually saw Tiger Woods buying an item he didn’t get paid to endorse – say a bottle of Robaxacet – I bet you would be influenced by his purchase the next time you had a tweak in your back

Authenticity Means More Than Star Power

The influence seen from the Robaxacet purchase comes from the fact that his usage is authentic and speaks to the fact that he must actually believe the product works or he would just call Advil and tell them to give him a lifetime supply (along with millions of $$) and they could stick his face on the bottle. Ok you are saying but Tiger Woods is not using my – insert product or service here – so I don’t have the ability to leverage his star power. Ah but you do I say!

You may not make a product or service sold on the mass scale of the products that Tiger endorses but again my point is that you have the ability to use influencer marketing in much the same way. People out there are using your product or service and thus must have formed some opinion about it. Currently those people might only be telling their neighbour (or their FriendFeed, Facebook groups etc) that they love your company and that is where the opportunity to make them your Tiger Woods comes in.

You Need To Scout For Your Celebrities

People have passion for all sorts of things. I may not know the first thing about Mah Jong but I know my Mom is so enthralled with the game that she regularly goes online to discuss it with people she has never met. If Mah Jong was your company, then my Mom could be your Tiger Woods, the thing is you need to be looking for her because she is not looking for you.

You need to seek out the users of your product/service and engage them in conversation. Figure out what it is they love (or hate – see my post on the Motrin Moms) about your company and then help turn them loose on all the people they can influence on your behalf. This will mean different things to different people but the main thing you should see is opportunity.

Again let’s use my Mom. She’s fairly Internet savvy but she is not going to start a blog or be Tweeting about your product so how can she be your Tiger Woods? She can be if you understand her and the fact that she probably represents a good percentage of your consumers/audience. They too are not blogging or tweeting about your company, but dig a little deeper and you will learn that she hosts games of Mah Jong weekly for over thirty of her friends and friends of friends. Just with that single tidbit of information you now know that she is the centre of a circle of influence and that enabling her to promote your product/service means that you have just found a passionate and authentic endorser of your company for the low cost of simply listenting and engaging.

The Center of Influence Will Help Your Message Ripple Out

Let’s stick with my Mom and Mah Jong for a bit longer…It might seem that there is no real promotion opportunity here, but what about the fact that each week she always puts out different exotic chocolates for her guests – If I was a chocolate company I might send her a box each month – Or how about a florist sending her little center pieces for each table – surely people would ask where the beautiful flowers came from. Of those 30 people who she talks to that day, how many people will they mention the chocolates or flowers too? What if you took it a step further than just giving her chocolates or flowers and enabled her to pass on a 15% discount to all the people who attended her Mah Jong game…And then what about those people, once they’ve ordered (using the unique code you gave my Mom) you not only know how you acquired them as customers but you now have an opportunity to engage them as influencers and grow the circle larger and larger.

My example is decidely low-tech, but I chose it for that exact reason. If your product or service is digital or you choose to engage users that are more wired than my Mom your task is much the same only you need to approach it with different tools (I have written before about providing your users with the tools they require to create content).

My point is that it is the authenticity that my Mom brings to her circle of influence that you should be grabbing on to and nurturing. She might not sink 35 foot putts as consistently as Tiger Woods, but in my mind her recommendations to the group she plays Mah Jong with are as influencial (I would argue more influencial) than the 100 million impressions/views that are reported when Tiger drinks a Gatorade at half-time during the Super Bowl.

So The real question you should be asking yourself is not how can I grow large enough to pay someone to promote or be equated with my brand? It is “who is already so passionate about my brand that given the right tools and love they will perform like myown personal Tiger Woods?“


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