Lady Gaga & Shaun White

Why would these two young people even be in the same sentence? The 2 most opposing forces of popularity today have more in common than you think. The theme here being they are the example of not only savvy marketers but the optimistic Generation Y that many, many, many, many marketing businesses, newsletters, blogs like to say work differently, think differently and are at the time very Peter Pan-esque.

I'd like to take a quick moment to vent about some of these marketing peoples and say to please stop dramatizing the eye-popping differences in each generation and to stop titling every piece of news as look at how different these younger folks are to us. Of course we're different!! Weren't you different from your elders when you were growing up? Didn't you adapt to newer inventions and ways of life than you're parents did? Didn't you have a self discovery path just as much as the generation after you? OF course you did. This isn't new to any generation and it saddens me so to see them given out as insights when instead gurus should be focusing on HOW their different and WHAT mediums are being used and available that are changing the behaviors of how they proceed into their own life stages. Phewwwwwww...I'm just tired of the same ol' insights coming from different sources. Read this article on teens in the workplace today as a great example for genuine, thoughtful and applicable insights.

Anyways, back to Ms. Gaga & The Flying Tomato. This 22 & 23 yr. old. are the pictures of how to do celebrity, endorsements, social media & marketing right. Why you may ask. Well consider that both, at the very young age, when most people are graduating college these two are worth a few million each. What makes them soo great? Well looking at their resume below, I'd say we all, including big, Fortune 500 companies have a lot to learn from their methods.

Lady Gaga

• Army of nearly 2.8 million Twitter followers 
• More than 5.2 million Facebook fans
• Her digital-single sales have exceeded 20 million and her album sales hit 8 million, all at a time when no one under the age of 60 buys CDs anymore 
• Her single Just Dance has been viewed 87 million times on YouTube. 
•  Poker Face, is the most downloaded tune in the history of U.K. digital music.
• 11,500 mainstream media stories have cited here from Jan. - Nov. 2009
• Within a year of her out-of-the-box rise to fame in Sept. 2008, Gaga had already lined up
• Virgin Mobile as a sponsor of her Monster Ball tour
• Created her own brand of headphones, Hearbeats by Lady Gaga
• Landed her own (cherry pink) lipstick as a spokeswoman for Mac Cosmetics' Viva Glam. The launch day of her Viva Glam lipstick ad campaign alone generated nearly 20 million unique views in traditional media
• She was tapped by Polaroid to become the brand's creative director

Shaun White

• In 2003 he added pro skateboarder to his résumé and took gold at the 2007 Summer X Games
• His pre-Olympic sponsor list included Mountain Dew and T-Mobile
• Street-wear line appears in Target stores across the country
• His best-selling Burton collection of snowboarding gear now includes a stand-alone extension for women
• There are marketing deals with Red Bull
• He worked with Oakley to create its first signature goggle, which quickly became a best seller
• He collaborated on a snowboarding video game with Ubisoft that went on sale just before the holidays.
• Shaun was the first celebrity to star in the HP "Hands" campaign. The campaign eventually featured Jerry Seinfeld, Serena Williams, Jay-Z, and Pharrell Williams and Shaun White got the biggest pickup of all

In the land of celebrities, where every celebrity is becoming a brand and endorsing everything and anything (i.e. Kim Kardashian endorses everything from cupcakes to diet systems). What are these celebrities doing right? In all reality it is keeping true to who they are as a person, artist/athlete and brand. Very much in terms with Millenial characteristics.

Lady Gaga

• Gaga herself is the ultimate brains behind many of her creative and social-media ideas and tactics
• She's put a new-media spin on her distribution strategy using social media as the core
• Gaga has worked tirelessly in keeping up daily if not hourly communication with her fans and growing fanbase through all the technology that exists now
• Gaga maintain a hands-on relationship with her fans and marketing empire
• Doesn't want to ever look like she's endorsing a brand -- hence why she's created products for Universal's Beats By Dre headphones line, Viva Glam and now Polaroid as its new creative director.

Shaun White

• White has sought out companies he truly connects with
• White sees these deals as a long-term investment portfolio
• Each corporation meshes with a discrete slice of his actual life, and with each one, White dives in and takes a central role, from the design of specific products to pulling deals together among his various partners.
• He is living by his own code, and young people admire that. He has definitely stayed true.
• White cranks up his exposure in a new market without diluting his presence in another

A few lessons brands can take away from these two:  

• Natural synergy between a brand and a celebrity
• Allowing creative control to the celebrity
• Brand/product should be authentic & genuine, not forced
• Letting the celebrities promote in their own words & own ways
• Over-marketing the partnership will dilute the importance of the product as well as the celebrity itself
• Organic growth & WOM is always the best method for success which also requires patience & taking a leap of faith