Global pop star Lizzo – who built her impressive brand on body positivity and female empowerment – is the latest celebrity to face a number of serious allegations.
Earlier this summer, claims that Lizzo created a hostile work environment and sexually harassed her employees saw fans began to question the reality of the singer’s public image.
The controversy surrounding the news – and resulting lawsuit – is a sobering reminder for all brands not to undermine the very reason your audience loves you, as Energy PR’s deputy managing director Susannah Morgan explains.
Celebrities are essentially brands like any other. They have values and behaviours that people buy into – to a greater or lesser degree – and that level of buy-in dictates how much people will spend with that brand and how much bad behaviour they will tolerate.
Success or failure is ultimately dependent on the strength of that audience sentiment.
A brand – celebrity or product – that is loved will see the latest releases get snapped up, and there will be more tolerance of mistakes. That tolerance isn’t without limits, but it is valuable when things go wrong.
The importance of brand love
We’ve done research that shows what it takes for a brand to be loved by its audience. It must achieve a minimum of one of three things: its values align with the consumer’s values, it is closely tied with the consumer’s identity, or it becomes part of someone’s life.
That same research also shows that people will give brands they love more than twice as many chances after messing up than they would a brand they didn’t love. So, being loved by your audience has tangible commercial benefit.
However, when a brand knocks out a key value of why they are loved, they will find themselves in real trouble. If behaviour undermines the very reason your fans love you, that is a mistake much harder to forgive. And the backlash can be severe.
That is what has happened with Lizzo. She has built her fanbase on ideals of female empowerment and strong positioning around body positivity, which taps directly into the values and self-identity of her fans. So much so that she then becomes part of their lives because of the volume of her content and music that they consume.
That is all three pillars of creating brand love. So, when she is publicly accused of multiple behaviours that directly contradict the very reason fans love her, hitting all three pillars of brand love, it feels like a massive betrayal. As a result, it will be much harder to recover from.
In fact, recovery might not be possible at all if she is found guilty.
The Trump effect
Donald Trump proves the same point from the opposite direction. This is one of the most famous men in the world that can seemingly do no wrong in the eyes of his devoted followers, even if he is proven to have done wrong in the eyes of the law.
He can get away with being sued and arrested because it doesn’t impact the reasons why people love him. Every time it happens it’s just him against the establishment, the very stance which has earnt him so many fans. The lawsuits simply reinforce their position on him.
The strength of his supporters’ feelings for him makes him almost untouchable in their view. It’s an incredibly powerful piece of marketing positioning on Trump’s part. He knows his audience, and he plays to it, time and time again.
Another case in point would be Amazon. This brand fits with our spontaneous, off-the-cuff, convenience driven lifestyle. Need a potato peeler or sequin catsuit tomorrow? Amazon will deliver – and we love it for it! Even against our better judgement perhaps…
This love of how it fits with the way we live makes us tolerate the negative stories about workers’ conditions or the fact that we’re making one man immensely rich. But the moment it becomes unreliable on its delivery, we’ll fall out of love with it, because it has failed in the fundamental reason why we love it.
So, while your business might seem miles away from the Lizzo’s of this world, her downfall could also be yours, if you unwittingly trample over the reasons your audience is loyal to your business.
As loyalty is the key to repeat purchases, whatever the nature of your business, this would be an expensive mistake to make.
