First I have to admit that there was time when I wanted to buy Calvin Klein’s microfibre trunks as additions to my wardrobe. I don’t have any from this iconic brand and got this itch to try, to feel it touch my skin. No pride here because it is always hidden and I don’t plan to sunbathe with it. Something that stopped me was the price tag which is considerably higher than my usual wear which also features the same kind of fabric and comfort. Somehow this itch kept calling especially if I passed by the flagship store and an imaginary force appeared to pull me over to stop by and have a look. This went on, until one day when I was near the store and, bang, I spotted Justin Bieber in black and white image, acting cool with one arm full of tattoo, posing and advertising for the brand whose underwear I had been longing to have. Something not right with the poster and I couldn’t point out until my daughter said that the image was heavily photoshopped to make him appear full of muscle and more macho.

I don’t have any personal problems with Justin Bieber. Not that he has ever crossed my personal border or in anyway I am competing against him. We live in different universes and whatever he does has nothing to do with me, not in the same way that the drop in oil prices affects the coins in my pocket. Well, until that moment if I can say. Knowing that Justin Bieber is now the icon of Calvin Klein does influence my decision to buy the microfibre trunks. My itch is suddenly gone by the wind and with a glimpse of disappointment. The biggest letdown is due to the fact that Justin Bieber doesn’t represent my demographic profile and he is not anywhere in my liking quadrant. It will take a cosmic force to get me to like him considering some foolish acts he pulled that I heard from the news. It may not be significant, but Calvin Klein just lost a potential customer, at least for now. My mood may change if they decide to change the icon to, let’s say, George Clooney or Mark Zuckerberg.

One of the best business book I have read is Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert B. Cialdini, Phd. I strongly recommend you to read it for sales and marketing strategies. There are several factors that can influence people, in this case, to buy products. In his book, he mentions two of them are Social Proof and Liking. Social Proof implies that in light of uncertainty, people will follow the path where people like him choose. There are many examples for this that you can find in his book. Putting it into the perspective of my own encounter with Calvin Klein and Justin Bieber, if we plan to advertise our products to the public, after determining the target market and its demography, the next step if we need to choose a brand ambassador, is to find a personality that matches the targeted demography. The liking part says that we are more easily influenced by the person that we like and its intensity is pretty much influenced by physical attractiveness, attitude, similarity to us, compliments that we receive, level of contact or cooperation with us, and association. I am not saying that using Justin Bieber is a total PR disaster for Calvin Klein. Their advertising agency must have put a lot of thoughts and considered many other models until they finally zeroed in to Justin Bieber for whatever reasons. They may have demographic model which I don’t belong to or they may consider people like me as matured market which is not easily swayed by whoever they choose as their poster boy. They possibly target the younger males for their market expansion and believe that Justin Bieber is the right public persona to attract that market. Whatever it is in their mind, this strategy of using Justin Bieber is not the right one to pull me in.

Using the model who fits the targeted demography and revered by the right audience will increase the chance of maintaining the market share and grow it. On the other hand, wrong brand icon will create nothing but potential disaster, so important that many companies have decided to withdraw the advertisements just because their model got into some personal troubles that potentially affected their market acceptance level. You may remember the decision by Accenture, a leading consulting company, to pull out their advertisements featuring Tiger Wood right after he got involved into an extra-marital affair. Some of us may say that this is a paranoid measure by the company and that Tiger Wood’s personal life may not impede Accenture from doing their business, but as their swift actions said, they don’t want to leave their reputation to chance.

So, would you use Kim Kardashian as your next model for your high-tech company?