Déjà vu under the influence.

By Gonzalo López Martí / LMMIAMI.COM

• A few weeks back I ranted about the feeling of déjà vu a citizen of 2015 is exposed to when he or she is marketed to.
• Ads.
• You’ve seen one you’ve seen them all.
• The naïve consumer of old is gone for good.
• Those darned consumers are terminally jaded and blasé these days.
• They’ve been marketed to to such an extent, they have been exposed to such colossal amounts of advertising that they simply switched off their fickle attention or trained it elsewhere.
• The bag of marketing tricks is bursting at the seams.
• In fact, it already snapped.
• Like a piñata.
• Like Sofía Vergara’s dress during a red carpet outing.
• Consumers simply know every branded message they see on mass, digital or social media is a contrived concoction of dubious promises, half-truths and fine print.
• Manufactured, tested, re-tested and vetted by the legal department.
• If they don’t know it, they suspect it.
• They don’t buy it anymore.
• Figuratively & literally.
• This is the very reason why influencers (formerly known as celebs) are back with a vengeance.
• In a not so distant past, the conventional wisdom in our racket was stacked against the use of celebs: they’ll steal the limelight, eclipse your brand and cannibalize your product.
• People will watch your commercial, remember the endorser and ignore the endorsee.
• Concept is king.
• Stay away from endorsers.
• Celebrities are a waste of time and money.
• Working with celebs is a pain in the rear end.
• Annoying divas and prima donnas.
• Their contracts come with riders that read like an unabridged edition of the Old Testament.
• Well.
• That was then.
• The tide has turned.
• Big time.
• Celebs still maintain a certain credibility.
• Hence, they are back on their feet and making hay with a capital H.
• Two words: social media.
• These days the socmed feeds of celebs look like a NASCAR® driver’s uniform.
• A credible influencer like, say, JayZ is now a one-man media conglomerate.
• You could easily launch a new brand of sneakers just by landing a deal with JayZ’s camp.
• He tweets about your sneakers, he casually rocks them on Instagram, he plugs them on his music videos.
• You are good to go.
• I’m speaking from first-hand experience here.
• Not too long ago, a client of mine in the spirits category considered the possibility of landing an endorsement with said rapper (yes, Beyoncé’s husband).
• It’s quite a peculiar story that paints the surreal nature of our business in full color.
• Oddly enough, the original… idea… was to land an endorsement deal with Kanye West.
• Because?
• Due to the fact that the brand, a rum from Nicaragua, has serious brand-name recognition issues.
• It is a long and winding name full of consonants.
• Latinos have a hard time remembering it.
• Gringos simply cannot pronounce it.
• A serious setback when you want to impress a bartender and look cool in front of the ladies at your watering hole of choice.
• Nobody wants to embarrass themselves fumbling a tongue twisting brandname in public.
• Hence, we came up with the, err, strategy, of signing Kanye, whose name’s pronunciation has an uncanny resemblance to our client’s.
• Purely pavlovian.
• How we ended up negotiating with JayZ escapes me completely.
• If my memory doesn’t fail me, we contacted a some powerful agent in the hip hop world.
• He said something like, hey, Kanye is a pain to work with, try JayZ, he’s way more professional and reliable.
• Plus, by association Beyoncé will come with the package too.
• There goes the strategy.
• Long story short: JayZ demanded a controlling stake of shares in the company.
• Literally.
• In writing.
• I kid you not.
• His bargaining line was “I will make you sell so much friggin’ rum that you’ll be happy to pretty much hand me over your little Nicaraguan distillery and become my junior partner”.
• The client was in shock.
• Negotiations stalled, needless to say.
• He drives a hard bargain JayZ.
• And if you ask Gonzalo, if I had to put myself in JayZ’s shoes in the current state of marketing upheaval, he’s damn right.