HERE'S THE PROBLEM WITH LINDSAY LOHAN'S AND LAWYER.COM COLLABORATION.

HERE'S THE PROBLEM WITH LINDSAY LOHAN'S AND LAWYER.COM COLLABORATION.

What happened here?

Ilia Papadimitriou in her blog post she introduced her readers to the surprising-if not controversial- collaboration of the notorious celebrity and party-girl Lindsay Lohan with Lawyer.com.

Lindsay is an infamous party-girl well known worldwide from her movies, party-life and numerous arrests. On the other side, Lawyer.com is a platform that depending on the type of law service you need they are addressing you to the appropriate lawyer from a network of professionals they are collaborating with.

Ilia’s argumentation was based on three solid points: the honesty of Lohan’s approach of her past, the surprising element of choosing Lohan as their spokesperson because she would draw the media’s attention and her credibility as she needed lawyer’s services multiple times in the past.

So why are we talking about this?

In this blog post, I am going to counter-argue with some of the above-mentioned points and provide further information from the campaign and consequently the collaboration.

First things first…

A spokesperson is a celebrity who is becoming the face of a brand or a company to the public’s eyes for a certain amount of time in print and on (social) media. In most cases, since it is considered collaboration he/she is getting paid (Callison, C. 2001).

Using a celebrity as an endorser is a smart marketing tool in most of the PR practices. The biggest companies and brands (Nike, Gucci, Nespresso) have used this strategy in order to promote their products. This commonly used strategy entails certain risks. It requires targeted communication strategies, companies to know their audience and its expectations from the product. The chosen celebrity needs to be perfectly in-line with the company in terms of values and vision about the product they are advertising (Gillin, P. 2008).

Many reasons why…

In our case, there are some public reactions and reasons why this collaboration proved to be not that successful. To begin with, some social media users were offended by Lohan’s joke about DUIs.

Furthermore, so far there are 69 comments below Lohan’s ad on YouTube and most of them are not supportive- if not mocking – of the choice of celebrity for that specific cause.

Some of the risks of using a celebrity, as a spokesperson would be:

·      Celebrity steals the spotlight. One of the main benefits of using a celebrity would be to use his fame, exposure on media and influence in various audiences to advertise your product, but what if the celebrity gets bigger than the product? An alternative possible outcome would be that the celebrity is remembered more than the brand. Especially in this case that the brand was not under the media’s radar before that collaboration, the amount of fame they gained in such short notice because of Lindsay Lohan might be hard to manage. Eventually, the situation could get out of hand for Laywer.com. Researched on Cybermedia proved that 80% of participants could recall the celebrity but were not able to recall the company (Khatri, P. 2006).

·      Source Derogation. One of the main strategies to resist persuasion is the source derogation. This strategy involves undermining the importance and trustworthiness of the source and denies his/her validity. Lindsay Lohan has nothing to do with the field of law -whatsoever- and despite their attempt to use her honesty as a marketing tool, many people would still not take her and the company seriously, let alone trust them with their lives and legal problems (Zuwerink Jacks, J., & Cameron, K. A.2003). Another way that this situation could backfire would be that if the spokesperson is perceived as non-credible (let’s say because she has been on tabloids for years) then this will reflect poorly on the public image and credibility of the whole company and consequently, people and clients will lose their trust in them.

·      Inconsistent Image. Lohan on the ad video she tried to portray herself as one of the people who have used legal advice in the past and would definitely use the services of the platform (if needed); the only difference is that she won’t. By mocking the DUIs and joking about the numerous times she had problems with the law reminds everyone that she could not be further away from the average non-famous people who would look online for legal help. On the contrary, she has a well-prepared team of professionals to take care of the “details” of her arrests. The conflicting image between who she portrays to be on the video and the excessiveness of her real-life could harm the image and trustworthiness of the company (Ma, L& Zhan, M. 2016).

All in all, the choice is left to you. “Would you trust her to bail you out?”

About the author: Maria-Louiza Kalogerakou is currently a master's student in Communication Science at the University of Amsterdam who is hoping to finish her Master's as soon as possible and travel the world. She was born in Athens and raised in Crete. Maria-Louiza has been working and doing internships for the last 4 years on her field but she really hopes to move back South and continue to listen to vinyl by the sea.

REFERENCES:

Callison, C. (2001). Do PR practitioners have a PR problem?: The effect of associating a source with public relations and client-negative news on audience perception of credibility. Journal of Public Relations Research, 13(3), 219-234.

Gillin, P. (2008). New media, new influencers and implications for the public relations profession. Journal of New Communications Research, 2(2), 1-10.

Khatri, P. (2006). Celebrity endorsement: A strategic promotion perspective. Indian media studies journal, 1(1), 25-37.

Ma, L & Zhan, M. (2016) Effects of attributed responsibility and response strategies on organizational reputation: A meta-analysis of situational crisis communication theory research, Journal of Public Relations Research 28(2), 102-119.