Genuine question, no advice given: Can Jordan be an asset to your business?

Apologies if the Adfero blog looks like it’s turning in to a celebrity blog given the last post involving Ricky Gervais; I can assure you it is not. That said, I found myself glued to the TV over the Bank Holiday watching an advert for the latest Katie and Peter reality show on ITV2. Having only seen the advert (honestly) I noticed it was sponsored/in association with http://www.kiddicare.com/ which caught my interest.

Kiddicare subscribe to our DirectNews product which was why it caught my attention. Adfero have worked with Kiddicare for many years and one of our early success case studies demonstrated that one article we wrote for them about Jordan directly resulted in a significant increase in traffic and product sales on their website. The team at Kiddicare are excellent and I am in no way suggesting that this played any part in their decision to sponsor this show BUT it merely started my cogs turning – well, once I had figured out that Katie Price is in fact Jordan!

The thoughts going through my mind were not whether Katie/Jordan or Peter are good role models for parents with young children (I will leave that to Kilroy and Trisha) but how did Kiddicare come to their decision to sponsor this particular show?

I understand the principles or PR, branding, advertising etc but is it risky to associate your brand with an individual – particularly one as controversial as Jordan? How does this work online? Typically this level of above-the-line advertising and brand association is for individual products as a source of endorsement, but you never see Gary Lineker having an argument with his family in a Walkers advert - he just eats crisps.

Please do add any comment. Do you sponsor a celebrity?