Beth Brincat, celebrity manager, Scope

1. Using celebrities
to enhance and protect your
reputation

2. • How do you pick them?
• How do you manage them?
• How can they help protect and build your reputation?
• What you can do if it goes wrong?
• Celebrity “scandal”

3. How do you pick them?
• Research, research, research
• Common sense
• The charity brand, this will be different for every
organisation
• If a celeb is known to be controversial think hard
about using them

4. How do you manage celebrities to minimise
risk to your brand?
• Brief them to be on brand
• Make them aware of any developments
• Develop a good relationship with your CEO
• Make them feel a part of the charity

5. How can they help protect and build your
reputation?
• What sort of reputation do you want?
• Always on message, always on brand
• Celebrities have a lot of platforms to speak out
from;
personal websites, twitter, youtube
• A personal connection, the pubic can see
through someone reading from a script
• There is a difference between the role of a
supporter and a named Patron role.

6. What you can do if it goes wrong?
Think first, what is this scandal how big is it really?
• Have their actions affected other people?
• Does it contradict your charity’s messages and
objectives?
• Will it alienate your key audiences?
• How does the celebrity react to the “scandal”?

7. Think next, how tied to your charity is the
celebrity?
• Do they have a named title, are they a President or Patron,
did they set up the charity?
• Were they photographed last week at an event laughing
and joking with your CEO?
• Do you actually need to make a comment on them to
internal or external audiences?
• Remember, whether or not the celebrity supports your
charity will be unlikely to be dwelled on in the news story
as a whole.
• Will you stick by them? When the scandal passes they
could be more loyal to you than ever.

8. • Have a plan in place, do you have a strategy?
• Can you say to an internal audience, yes we did
our risk assessments?
• Always be gracious and acknowledge the good
work they did in the past.
• Don’t be drawn into comment, stick to the
charity brand messaging.
If you do decide you need to distance
yourself from them;

9. Let’s look at some examples of celebrity
“Scandals”

19. Group discussion – How damaging are
these celebrity “scandals”?

20. Thank you