The Spotlight Agency connects high-calibre celebrity talent with brands worldwide who are seeking to enhance and elevate their marketing initiatives and projects.
The key to our success is the authentic connections at the centre of all partnerships we facilitate, and the unique range of celebrity talent that we represent. While brands often choose to partner with a celebrity or an influencer, our talent offer the best of both worlds.
In this three-part “mythbusting” blog series, we’re exploring the differences between celebrity and influencer talent, showcasing how our celebrity talent check all the boxes.
In part one, we’re digging into the myth that celebrity talent offer high reach, but low engagement compared to influencers, and how this simply isn’t true when it comes to our unique roster of talent.
Myth #1: Celebrity Partners Have High Reach, but Low Engagement
Before the rise of social media, brands partnered with celebrities through more traditional media approaches, such as print and television ads. These campaigns capitalized on a celebrity’s widespread appeal but, due to the nature of the mediums, did not allow for interaction with the public. Today, even with the advent of social media, it’s often assumed celebrities still have this one-way, high-level communication with their large audiences.
Influencers, on the contrary, have built their brands through the two-way communication social media offers with their audiences. As such, brand partners assume that influencers will yield higher engagement than celebrities, because it’s believed they are more likely to engage in conversation with their community.
Our talent merges the best of what both celebrities and influencers offer — wide-spread name recognition with wide-spread interaction. While our celebrities are public figures who may have first risen to popularity outside of social media, they nonetheless prioritize and strengthen their popularity by engaging with their fans and followers online, both in their personal and sponsored content.
Case Study: High Reach, High Engagement
Jennifer Valentyne x TENA
Television personality Jennifer Valentyne’s bubbly personality shines over social media. Her community loves sharing in her passion for cooking, family fun, holidays, and creative home hacks, and admire her for her authenticity and vulnerability. Jennifer has engaged her followers in heartfelt discussions on aging and confidence, so when TENA was looking to partner with a talent to have real, honest conversations about growing older, Jennifer was a natural fit.
Jennifer first collaborated with TENA in 2022, and has continued
the partnership into this year. In a series of videos, Jennifer chronicled her experience with different aspects of aging, and gets honest about things like ageism at work, menopause, and even becoming a caregiver. “When you’re open about your health with the women and girls in your life, you can help lift that weight for them and empower them to have the confidence to do the same for others,” she says in one video for the campaign.
Jennifer’s campaign with TENA was a success. This reel, posted on multiple platforms, had over 71 hours of playtime on TikTok alone, over 78K views on Facebook and Instagram, and over 4000 likes. What was truly incredible, was the amount of community and conversation sparked in the comments of each post. Women were opening up to each other about their personal experiences and offering advice on everything from estrogen and hormones, anxiety, vitamins, exercise, and more.
Sangita Patel x Sleep Country Canada
ET Canada’s Sangita Patel is a long-time partner of Sleep Country Canada. She has partnered with them on multiple campaigns that included redecorating her teenage girls’ bedrooms for back to school, celebrating World Sleep Day, and promoting their 248-hour sleep challenge.
For each of these campaigns, Sangita created original content that included a mix of Instagram stories, reels, and in-feed posts. She specifically wrote the captions to engage her audience of 268K+ followers in conversation about sleep, Sleep Country, and their products.
The captions and video content showcased her vibrant personality and approachable sense of humour that her fans know and love.
Our client reported back that Sangita was a top performer in reach and impressions for their World Sleep Day campaign, including cost-per-click (CPC) and click-through-rate (CTR). She also drove a high conversion rate, even though this specific campaign wasn’t sales-driven. As our client shared, this result “speaks to the strength of her credibility and authenticity with branding.”
Case Study: Celebrity Engagement
A unique element that our celebrity talent brings to their brand partners is the level of engagement with other celebrities and high-profile personalities on their sponsored campaigns.
For example, television’s Tracy Moore is a multi-year partner of Hyundai Canada. She showcases how Hyundai’s different models of cars fit her busy and multi-faceted life. On one reel created to promote the benefits of the Hyundai Palisade, who showed up in the first two comments on the post? None other than her friends, beloved media personalities Jennifer Valentyne and Dina Pugliese.
In essence, Hyundai Canada not only received a boost from partnering with Tracey, but also from the many high-profile individuals — such as Jennifer and Dina — who interacted with her content. All of the additional celebrity comments added to the post’s credibility, which had a total reach of 30.3K+ with a 5.73% engagement rate.
Contact us to learn more about our celebrity talent and how they can drive reach and engagement on your influencer campaigns.
