An excerpt from to-day's USA Today:
Overstock. The "It's all about the O" woman made her Overstock.com debut in 2003. Now, the sultry pitch woman has legions of Web sites dedicated to her.
Advertising watchers say it is not always desirable for a spokesman or spokeswoman to become a star because there's a risk of overshadowing the brand. Pop culture professor Robert Thompson says marketers have to watch out for overexposure.
"If that character becomes irritating, it may be hard to separate the brand from that annoyance," says Thompson, who teaches at Syracuse University. Stormy Simon, Overstock's vice president of branding, says the company took under consideration that it may be what happened to its spokeswoman, Sabine Ehrenfeld, who uses a sultry tone and seductive look to pitch the breadth of products sold at the discount Web retailer.
"We have to be aware that the 'O' is our brand and walk a fine line," Simon says about the ads, which are made in-house. "We never saw the speed limit sign, and we just gassed it and went full-speed ahead."
If you search her name on Google, my entry from last September comes up on top. So I got that going for me, which is nice . . .
Talk about over-exposure, there isn't a media related topic that Professor Robert Thompson of Syracuse University's Newhouse School doesn't stand ready to be quotable upon.
Just google him to see what I mean. He holds himself out as an expert on so many topics he fits the bill on "[a] character becomes irritating, it may be hard to separate the brand from that annoyance."
Heck, there was even a blog/website dedicated to chronicling this guys quotableness.
http://www.snarkcake.com/thompson/
Lazy damn reporters, always going to the same damn guy to get a quote.
Posted by: The Comedian | 07/25/2005 at 11:00 PM