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Importance of Buzz from Celebrities

So I love talking about celebrities because we all can relate to celebrities, right? How many of us read celebrity magazines? I'm curious I see some hands up here I read them sometimes not all the time but the reason celebrities are so great is because people love celebrities and people love to do what celebrities are doing and they love to wear and use what celebrities are wearing and using so the whole next hour or so is all about how do you get your products on celebrities and how do you get them to endorse your products without actually having to pay a million dollars to get them to say that they love your products? Which happens a lot? So this is again more for entrepreneurs that have a product, but I think it could also apply in some ways to entrepreneurs that have a service that might be a great fit for celebrity so let's talk about the benefits why would you want to get your products on celebrities? And I know I've personally had my t shirts on celebrities and it really did inc...

rease to some sales although I'll talk a little bit about later that's not always the case, so you're going to find out if you do get your products on a celebrity, how can you translate that into actual sale so people love celebrities and I put that in caps there because they really do there there's a reason there's so many celebrity magazines, so many celebrity shows and people are actually watching them and listening to them and going out and buying all of these products. So why not have those products be your own products? Right? S o the other benefit, besides the fact that if you get something on a celebrity people are gonna want it is that it increases your brand awareness, and not only among the celebrity circle, but sometimes with the magazines as well, because they write about products that celebrities are using, and it also ultimately can help to increase your sales, although, as I was saying before that's, not always the case, and that might not always happen. So I don't want you to think that just because you have a product on a celebrity, you're automatically going to get a lot of sales, and you can also increase your influence, just like you can't with your brand awareness and most importantly, and increases social proof. If a celebrity love something and they said, I use this lotion every morning or I go to this restaurant every day or my baby words, this kinds kind of clothing, social proof, right? There are people buy things that other people are loving, and if other person loving get is a celebrity, they're more likely to actually buy your stuff. And then it's also a great way to increase media exposure. What happens a lot of times is if you get a celebrity to endorse your products or to wear and use your product and you let a magazine that focuses on celebrities know that the celebrity loves my t shirts or they love my selves. Probably the magazine is going to be writing about your products so it's a great way and I'm curious to know has anyone had any of their products on celebrities or have been dealing with celebrities in the audience and I you have yeah, oh, woe! And in which way it is. Early about this time last year, I was I received a referral to someone that was putting like a gifting back together for tori. Spelling was having her fourth child thin. And so it was me and about I want, say, fifteen other brands and I submitted one of my body suits and one of my bibs. But I did have to pay for it was the one thing, but because of that it was featured on the the people dot com blogged, which got a lot more traffic to my site. I think it bumped up my failed a little bit. I had a lot more like social media engagement and everything, and then that from that a couple other opportunities came, um including, like working with a couple other celebrities, but I don't know that that's, like one of the main avenues that I want to go with publicity was kind of just like the night side thing to do, okay, yeah, thanks so much for sharing that and I actually had it was really similar experience to that as well, and I'm going to talk about a little bit about it in the session, but yeah, I'm glad he said that because you're not always going to see an end immediate increase in sales, and as I was saying before, you shouldn't be putting all of your eggs in one basket and on lead working with celebrities are on ly working with magazines. This is just another way for you to be well rounded in your marketing and in your publicity. So there's a couple of things or criteria that your product kind of has to meet if you want to do if you do want to get sales from celebrity, so the first one is something that a celebrity or their family can use or where in public and that's not enough they have to be photographed using it, so especially if you want to get in magazines, so those are things like apparel, right t shirts are a great example of that baby clothing jewelry they always were jewelry, earrings, necklaces and so on or handbags baby products is another really great thing for example, if you have a stroller and a celebrity has a baby and they're walking around their baby in your stroller and someone takes a photo and that photo ends up in a magazine then imagine the brand awareness that you're going to get but aa lot of these things have to happen before you can actually see sales from it so it's more of like a long term process with get with results that are not guaranteed but again in publicity it's not always guaranteed although most of the time you will see something from it so celebrity gifting is great if your product could meet these criteria it's a maybe if your product it's it's one that a celebrity could maybe talk about in an interview but they can be photographed using right? So for example, if you have a lotion or toothpaste or something like that that you want to get to a celebrity they might be able to talk about an interview when someone says what's your favorite beauty care product or what's your routine like in the morning and they could mention your products but probably oh celebrity celebrity photographer is not going to go in their bathroom photographed and brushing their teeth and then put that photo in a magazine with the brand of toothpaste that they're using so this is I put that under maybe because sometimes if you have, like bath and beauty products or even furniture or even food, sometimes they say, you know, what's your favorite go to snack after you work out and they mentioned maybe a bar or something like that. Then again, that's something where it's a maybe because they can possibly be talking about it and sharing go it's sharing good with the media and these are even things like aps eso if you have a nap, you don't have to be left out of the whole celebrity gift gifting now, there's definitely a no, and if your product falls in and to any of these categories, it probably wouldn't make sense for you to be going after celebrities and having them endorse your product. So this is a product, for example, that a celebrity doesn't want others to know that he or she is using. So for example, I know some celebrities are vegans, and if you have a handbag or shoes or about that's made out of leather, you probably would not want to send it to a celebrity that's vegan because it totally goes against any of the things that they stand for on gets the same for example. I know some celebrities really love organic stuff, and if you're sending them something that's made of chemicals, they're probably not going to want to use it because it doesn't, they don't want other people to know that they're actually using those products. And then lastly, if it's a competitive over a product that they officially endorse, so a lot of times celebrities are going to be getting paid to endorse certain makeup or certain drinks or certain gyms or other different brands. And if you're a competitor of their brand, even though they might love using your brand, but they're probably never going to talk about it, never going to go out in public wearing good and that's not going to be a good fit for your own product. So think about your products. How did they fit in here? Is that a yes? Maybe or a no? So if you do decide that it's a yes, or maybe how do you actually get out there to the celebrity? So there are four ways I think there there's a couple of other ones, but these are the four ones that I want to focus on talking about today. So the first one is a celebrity gifting company, and this I've actually done this myself, and here you'll see ah little basket of a photo or a photo of a basket in which my t shirts were in along with other products, so what happens here is, ah, company that they already have a link to celebrities they will go ahead round up a whole bunch of products and send them to a celebrity for a specific occasion whether it's, mother's day or the celebrity just had a baby or maybe they're celebrating a new movie launch or a specific event and they send them this little gift baskets or the gift baskets sometimes and this is great because these celebrity gifting basket companies aa lot of times they have a track record, they've done this, they know the celebrities they know their assistance, they know who the right person is for them to be going tio so they have a track record of success and if you work with them they couldn't get you directly to the celebrities and a lot of times they have direct access to celebrity. So sometimes maybe someone on a movie set who has this gifting company on the side because they're always on movie asides and they're always coming across celebrities so they always a lot of them have direct access either to the celebrities themselves or to the celebrities, personal trainers or their makeup artist, their hair stylist, their wardrobe stylist and they have experience with this so sometimes it's really good if you could get into one of those gift baskets, but the cons is that it could be really expensive and sometimes they charge a couple of hundred dollars sometimes it's a couple of thousand dollars so do you want to be spending that money? Do you have it in your budget? Are you willing to take a risk? Because again, it's not guaranteed that you're actually going to get sales from it? And the other con is that your product is presented with aa lot of other products, like like you saw in the gift basket, my t shirts were not the only thing that was on there, so the celebrity could just pick out what they want and do something else with the things that they don't want. But again, you're not having impact like you would if you were just sending one product in one package for them to be looking at. But if you do decide that this is around, you want to go on? This is something I've personally tried, I've done it twice and one time it worked and one time it didn't work. But again this side, if it's worth taking the risk for you. But if you do decide to do this, here are some tips that you can take away from today session. So the first one is that you want to take a celebrity gifting company that has a track record and a proven track record in your industry, so let's say, if you have baby items and the gifting company focuses on lee on baby items. And reaching out the celebrities that have babies it's probably going to be a good fit if they focus more on women's celebrities or other types of celebrities and might not be such a good fit for you. So if you could find one that specializes in your industry, whether that fashion or jewelry or accessories or baby products or even food, I know some celebrity give baskets on lee to food, then that's probably going to be a good one for you and then ask for references. This is one of my favorite things to do whenever I spend my money with someone is that especially if it's ah, large amount of money is that I like to ask for references and actually check them? And if the company's doing a good job, they'll be more than happy to give you references. Sometimes they might say, well, I'm sorry that information is confidential on dh we can't reveal that, but you can sometimes find the companies that they're working with by looking at photos off their gift baskets because you'll see what other brands air in there. So just a couple of seconds, look and see what brands air there. And send them a quick email and say hey, I just saw your oh your product in a gift basket with this company and I'm considering working with them as well did it work for you? What was your experience like with them where they great to work with? Did you get on the results from that and you couldn't really get a lot of great feedback and decide if that's going toe be a good fit for you or not you could get really a lot of feedback from asking other people that are working with them and then like a lot of other things where you have to spend a lot of money, you're going to have to sign a contract so you want to make sure to read your contract carefully? Are you allowed to mention that you were part of their gift basket and can you say my gift basket was sent to tori spelling or do you have to keep that private? Your contract is going to spell out all of those things so you know does this work for me if it doesn't can re negotiate and you I can't stress enough how important it is to read the contract because if they're saying you can't use those photos and you put those photos up on the website they could sue you you can lose your business and a lot of other bad things can happen especially when it comes with celebrities. They're really tricky about the images that they want put out there, the things that are associated with them. So read your contract and if it's a company that doesn't have a contract, I would think twice about working with them because it probably means they're not as professional as they should be when it comes to dealing with celebrities, and then if you do decide to do it and your contract looks good and you sign it and you pay a fee once you have o r once they put the gift basket together and they have photos of the request of photo, and what do you want to do with that photo? Is that you want to put it on your website? You want a shirt on social media, you want a shirt in your newsletter and maybe with your retailers, and you can say, hey, my products are going to tori spelling, or they're going tio denise richards, and a lot of times that in itself could getyou sales again, indirectly so it would be even better if the celebrity roll back to you and said, I love your one z this is awesome. Can you send me five more before my daughters? Then you can really leverage that. In a lot more ways than you could if you just have a photo of a big gift basket, but even that photo, if you put that on your site, couldn't really go a long way as well again, because people of celebrities and they want to know what products are they using? What products are they being presented with? And it could really increase your sales as well. So as I mentioned before, I've done this once or twice once it worked great in terms of sales once it didn't, so you could weigh it against your own business objectives, your own budgets and see how it really feds, and sometimes they'll ask you to send obviously more than one sample of your product because maybe they're doing twenty gift baskets or fifty gift basket, and then they might want your product to have as samples in case the press calls them, because what happens a lot of times is that they'll send out this give back good, they send out a huge release to the press that this gift basket is going out, and sometimes the press will write them and they'll say, oh, I love that product. Can you send me a sample? May be, we'll write about it, too, so be prepared to send some product samples. Again, if you if they're asking for fifty and you could only do ten then again up cos probably not going to be a good fit for you working with them, so keep that in mind and just weigh everything and see see how you're feeling before you actually go ahead and do it. Yeah, sure, isha, why do you sleep that out of the two times that you tried it? That one worked and wanted yeah have any indication that's a good question and it's kind of hard to you know, I think one of them was with my baby onesies and it was specific like you were saying a celebrity was having a baby think tori spelling was part of it too, and it was specific yeah, I know and she is great because she always sends thank you notes back on dh every time I've signed something to her, she has always sent me, I think, you know, so if you want a celebrity endorsement, she's a great one to start with and denise richards does the same thing because any time I've sent her something, I've gotten something back, but I think for that it's because I did get the thank you note back and it was a company that was specifically working for or with celebrities that we're having babies and they were sending it for a specific reason and for that, I was able, teo, I mean, I don't think I got sales because tori spelling send me a thank you note, but I got sales because then I emailed my retailers and I said, I just got this great celebrity endorsement, and then I emailed my email list and put it all over social media and blogged about it so it's more about what I did with it afterwards, as opposed to what they did with it and just the fact they send me a thank you note and then the other gift basket, I never heard anything back on guy couldn't really doing taking with it because at that point, it was out of my hands. So I think that's a really great question, and I think that's, the main reason as to why one worked and one didn't work. Yeah, and yeah, so kind of what you were just saying about what you did to promote it after the fact. So after all that initial, you know, I did all of those things as well, like email list, social media, sharing everything. Um then where does it live? So I got the pictures that the official pictures that they signed off on, like these air for you guys use they actually, once the baby was born. But I got a picture of him in the bid, which is really cool. Yeah, I was like, ok, so then does that go on like a testimonials page? Because obviously my stuff is pretty limited. So would it go on my press page? What kind of deal, right doesn't have a dedicated block post just somewhere where, you know, whether it's, the media or an individual person shopping or a potential retailer, if they're kind of doing their research on me, is this a brand that I want to trust? You know, but where should that, um, celebrity like picture and kind of blur live on my site? Yeah, it she'll live in a lot of those places that you mentioned. Okay, I think later on I'm going to give you specific places where it should be as well and what you should do with it and how you could actually leverage those. Okay, but yes, all of those places it should be on your home page. So that way, when someone comes to your home page, they see right away it's like, wow, tori spelling loves this and her baby's worrying it. I want my baby to will be wearing that too. So your home page for sure definitely do a block post about it. You can also email that to celebrity magazines and let them know that tori spelling's, babies wearing this and the hopes are that especially if you have a picture, that that photo can then get published in a celebrity magazine, and then it could hopefully go viral. So there's a couple of things you can do with it to turn it into sales, and I'm definitely going to get to all of those things that you could do, but it doesn't stop by just getting to think, you know what? You have to go beyond that, and actually we do something with that. Thank you. Note yes, robyn it kind of something that had never seen before. I went to designer jewelry designers website, and she had one that was as seen on such and such in a tv show. Um, and then she had product that said, as sent tio, so it hadn't been warned. It was something she gifted to specific celebrities, but she had the celebrity image up there, and she had the image of what she had sent to the celebrity, but it had been warned is that I thought that was I had never seen that before. What is your take on that's? A little iffy, yeah, it because you're basically using the celebrity's name to say that they received received it and that sort of by saying ask pitch to oprah you know okay we can all pitch to oprah and then we could all have that on our side but I think that's a little kind of crossing the lines there yeah it was yeah it's interesting I haven't seen that I wouldn't be surprised like that's some chutzpah yeah yeah you know and sometimes maybe if you work with someone who really has a direct contact like let's say your sister works on him movie said and she works with some big celebrity and she personally handed to her then maybe but even though I because one of the celebrity hates it or they don't like it or they don't want to be associated with it but if they take the time to send you a thank you note that means that they actually like it so I would on lee really post it up there if you got the ok from them and if they say sometimes they'll on ly send an email and they'll say I love this can you send me more or thank you so much for thinking of me and sometimes I'll turn that into a little testimonial and put it on my site instead of the actual think you know that they send but yeah it's a really fine line I don't think I would put it there just if I sent it to a celebrity yeah, yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. It was christine. Yeah, yeah, um, so there's a ton of things you could do afterwards to translate that into sales and will be spending a lot of time talking about that as well. And so, yeah. So now I want to move on from talking about two celebrity gift baskets to celebrity gifting lounges, because these are a little different. So a gift basket it's something that is sent via mail to a celebrity, whether it's their office or their home, or depending one what address they have, but celebrity gifting lounges. What happens is aa lot of times, there's, huge vines and bigger words that are going on, and before celebrities go into the award or after they come out, there are these gift lounge is set up where it's a whole bunch of products on tables, or just depending on how it's set up, or they could walk into a room, walk around to all of the tables, pick up the products that they're interested in, look at them, see if it's something they want, and maybe take them, or just take a photo of you and them with your product on dh, I'm sure a lot of you have seen that on a lot of different sites but this's a little different because you do get access directly to the celebrity and you're there with them and they could say, oh my god, I love this can I have it or this is really great thank you so much for giving this to me so you're interacting with them face to face if you're there working at that event so the pros of that is that you really are right there with them you can interact with them you can say oh, what do you love about it or I'm so glad you like it would you like something else or are you interested in another product that may be we have so I know ana you're saying you've done that to andi it didn't turn out so well and again it's just like the celebrity gift baskets sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't work, it just totally depends and sometimes the celebrities that go there are not a good food at all for your products and sometimes they are but nothing really happens with that so it's sort of the risk benefit thing where it might but it might not happen, so keep that in mind and don't be disappointed again if nothing comes out of it it's you just know you did something that didn't work and you could decide who I want to try this again so I want to move onto a different strategy but it's, just one thing that you can try and a different way that you can get your products to celebrities, and the other great thing is that you can get photos off them using or wearing your product, so a lot of times they'll pose with you, they'll put on your t shirt or, you know, they'll stand like this with your product, and you could take a photo with them, and then you can put that photo on your website and build that social proof that the celebrity has actually touched your product and they've seen it and they know about it, but it sounded jump in here. Yeah, because this is totally tongue in cheek was the funniest thing I've read in the chat room today brought tastic is saying you should bury a gps tracking devices science package on then send a quad copter photograph your celebrity, you see, you know, I don't know, sorry, I like thinking outside the box a little tio that's, funny bill. Oh, yeah, um so some of the cons of that is that it could really be expensive. I was approached by celebrity gifting lounge companies, and they said your feet is on ly ten thousand dollars to be in this flounder it's on ly five thousand dollars, or on ly two thousand dollars, but we'll be willing to give it to you for fifteen hundred because we love your product so much and we've really wanted and they're so it's a lot more expensive than doing the celebrity gift basket because they have to rent these rooms, they have to get staff there, they have to higher photographers and it's a huge production and they have to make money on top of that too, so it could be upwards of ten thousand dollars just to have celebrity stop by your booth for two minutes take a photo and there's your ten thousand dollars photo, so I'm warning you it's really expensive, but I also know people that have done it and it's worked amazingly well and people that have done and like anna and has not worked at all so again not it's this is never guaranteed you're really never going to know what the results are going to be until you actually try it. And the other con is that just like the gift baskets, your product is presented with a lot of other products so there could be twenty different products where celebrities air constantly walking around the room looking at different things and they only have a minute and I think a lot of times they say you could only be there for a minute on dh, then you have to move on to the next one so again, you're competing with some other products a lot of times they try tio get products that are totally different so it's not exactly your competitors but that's not always the case, so you will have tio share your products or or their attention with some of the other products that are in there and this is one that I totally took me by surprise is that you might have to pay more for images, so you would think that if you're already paying five thousand dollars to be here that if you take a photo or if you get a photo from the event that you can actually use that photo but what happens a lot of times is that they hired their own photographer, which costs a ton of money. I'm sure and then if you want to use the photo, you're not allowed to use the photo years to take photos yourself, but if you want to use a photo that a photographer's taking, you're gonna have to actually pay for it. So again think about how it is that extra photo on extra hundred dollars is that a thousand dollars and how worth it is it to you? And I'm no, I'm saying a lot of cons here, but again I know quite a few entrepreneurs that have done this and it has transformed their business and I know some that have done it and it has now worked at all. So again, you really won't know until you tried so it's kind of hard to say, is this a good thing you should be doing? Should I not be doing this? So you guys can decide if it makes sense for you or not? Yes, or is there a particular type of product that you think is more successful with these kind of things? Yeah, I think it's a lot of the products that are on on the us list because what happens a lot of times, they'll come to your booth, take your t shirt or take your baby clothes or your baby product, and then they'll go out and use it, and then the media is going to photograph them worrying or using your product, and then that photograph is going to end up in a magazine, so that's usually when I see the return on investment, when it actually makes it, makes it into a magazine, but again, that's a huge process to have to wait for and it's not always guarantee that they're going to be worrying get out in public. So you really dio you could sort of say, I'm getting lucky if they're wearing my stuff out and someone's taking a photo, and that photo makes it into a celebrity magazine that has a million readers. And a lot of times they say the name of the celebrity and what they're wearing or whether using so your brand name is right there too I know they do a lot of that with when celebrities come out of the gym and they're worrying certain clothes and like oh the celebrity's sweating and x y z brand you know and that's how you can get out there so it's such an indirect way to get sales but if you can get through all of those steps it could really pay off and you can see a ton of sales in a really short amount of time after that photos published but the wait is not that short to get in there another thing I suppose that should always be uh you should always bear in mind is that a celebrity stops I can go down as well it is are you choose someone who might have the world's most wonderful family friendly image in the next week the suddenly some off headline is attached to them and that can really damage your product it can do and that's such a good point too and that's happened to one celebrate that I send it to any was silver that I loved and then all of a sudden she was in the news in a negative way and I thought oh no ok how is this going to impact my brand so again that's a chance you might have to take because a lot of stuff happens with celebrities every week, and the stuff that had happened, those celebrity magazines wouldn't exist so aa lot of times they do try to focus on more of the negative aspect of it. So it really is a wild card when you put your stuff out there with celebrities, but again, because it's a wildcard, the payoff can be really huge as well. So it's it's just there's no way to predict which way it's going to go. Umm yes, not only is it costly t do these two things, but also it's your time and it's also they your product is completely donated so it's also the expense of that so taking in consideration can you afford tio not only pay x amount of dollars to be a part of the gift basket or the lounge, but then on top of that bring product that you're giving away for free? Exactly! Yes, yeah, yeah, it's and it's such a good point too, and as with all media, you have to send your product away for free. But if you're doing this sort of thing it's not just one product, you have to send a lot and then they have to several hundred dress was there because the press comes to these events to and sometimes it can be good because let's say people magazine comes to this gifting lounge and they love your t shirt and they want to write about it. They're going to write about it so it's sort of an indirect way to get press, so sometimes that can be really successful too, but you need to bring samples for the press to be able to take away, so you do have to invest in getting samples done and bringing them there for anyone who wants them to take them so again, benefit versus the risk and you're going to know if it's a good fit for your business or not. For me, it was fun to try. It was something that I wanted to experiment with because I have a t shirt, which is so easy for a celebrity to wear out when they're walking about or working out or going out. And I thought personally was a good fit for me, and I know a lot of brands that have baby products. I feel the same way because everyone wants photos of celebrities, babies and kids, especially when they're out. I know a client of a friend of mine, she makes little clips for for girls and so many times she's donate or she's given away. Her clips to celebrities and there's so many pictures of hollywood kids wearing her little clips and you know and all over the magazines and she's getting a ton of sales because she's been able to get to celebrity so for her it works really really well, so again you'll have to decide if it makes sense for you or not, but if you do the side that it make sense for you, here are some tips that you might want to look out for and the first one I mentioned I think this is exactly the same thing I said for the celebrity gift baskets but you do have to pick one that has a proven track record in your industry. So for example, if it's the country musical words and your products appear more to a hip hop audience, you probably wouldn't want to be at the country music awards and you want on a company that has more experience with head papa words and and that sort of event as opposed to one that's doing country music events all the time. So you have to see if it's a good food if it's in with their industry if they're working with celebrities that you would want to be associated with your product and then ask for references and check them and if they might not want to give you references although a lot of times it's listed on their site we've worked with these brands you can just call up or email a couple of those brands and say I saw on this site that you were you did a celebrity gifting lounge with them was it a good experience for you? Would you recommend it? Did you get a return out of it and then again you know and you have more information than if you were just to sign the contract without asking any questions and without asking for references and make sure that you do read your contract carefully because there's a lot of little things in there that you might not even have thought about in terms of how you can use their photos do you need to buy the photos can you take your own can you put them up on your web site? How can you actually use them and then obviously request photos so if you're not allowed to take photos make sure that at some point after the event you do ask him for photos a lot of times they will send them to you because they're really happy to have all of these great photos of the event but sometimes they might not so you have to go out and actually request them so I don't want to scare you guys from working with celebrities because it could really can be a great avenue for publicity but I do want to warn you about a couple of things so now, when you're saying about reading the contract carefully, are you able to put clauses of your own into a contract, perhaps, or do you think that's just being too pushy with celebrity? Can you insure yourself against something that may happen in the future that is going to affect your product? Yeah, I don't think you can necessarily say anything about if the celebrity has some bad publicity than I don't want to be associated with them, but you can say, you know, I don't want to pay extra for photos, can I get my photos for free? Or I want the celebrity tio maybe to take two photos instead of one photo? Can we work that in? So you, how you can be specific about what it's like to work with the company, but I don't think you can request anything from the celebrities or what would have after the event, but yet, that's, why it's so important to read your contract and make sure that you agree with all of the terms that they have in there, and really careful, and if it doesn't make sense to you a lot of times, they don't make any sense to me, get a lawyer or someone who might be an adviser, or someone has a lot of experience with contracts to help you to read that contract, because it might come back to bite you at some point because you didn't understand it I know what happened to me so that's um that's why I mentioned and get um so those were just two avenues that you can get to celebrities another one is pr firm so this is great because publicity firms they already have established relationships with celebrities and their style is there assistance I know I mentioned yesterday the pr from that I was working with they had a room in their office they were in allay any time celebrities or stylists were looking for something they would come to that room because they're working with a ton of clients pick out the outfits or the accessories or the things that they wanted to use and they would actually use them and with the goal of being featured on a movie set or may be at an audition or in some sort of photo so they do a lot of them already have those established relationships with celebrities where they just walk into their office to pick up a t shirt that is free for them to take. Sometimes they'll return it sometimes they'll keep it it's it's hard to know which one they're going to dio but they do have that access that we might not have right I don't have any contact with celebrities I'm not part of the whole world that they're part of so these pr pros they really are part of that especially there in new york and l a and a lot of times they'll offer services in addition to getting you in magazines that also say we'll do celebrity placement so sometimes you have to pay more for that sometimes it's included in your monthly retainer fee again looked at your contract and see what what they're including in there and because they have such close access and they're really into the industry they could get you in front of celebrities much quicker than I would self or than you can on your own. So for example when I decided to do celebrity gifting and I found had to find out their mailing addresses who to send it to get the package together and before I knew it it was a couple of weeks before the celebrities actually got my products but with something like this you just send it to your publicist celebrity walks in they can have it in a day or two so it's a much quicker way to really get to celebrities and they do have those connections that none of us are not many not many of us have but the cons as again it could be really, really expensive ah publicity firm can cost anywhere from one thousand dollars a month to ten thousand dollars a month and you're going to have to sign a contract for at least three to six months so that's could be a really expensive celebrity gifting campaign if you're only using them for celebrity gifting so again, does this work with your budget as the not doesn't make sense for you to dio and as with everything else in publicity, they cannot guarantee a result so I know with my pr firm they would email me all the time and they would say this person just how by they picked up one of your tank tops or this celebrity came by and took one of your shirts, but I never saw any results from their celebrity efforts. I did see some from their magazine outreach by nothing from their celebrity efforts, so again, it was included in my feet, but they couldn't guarantee me any results because they don't know what celebrities air going to dio with that tank top or the t shirt, maybe they might give it to a friend or maybe they liked it and they were at once and then they never word again, so they can't guarantee what celebrities are going to do so and turn they can't really guarantee to you what the results are going to be. So if you do the sites to go that route here some tips that I wanted to share with you again take one that has a proven track record I can't stress this enough, you want to make sure that on their website they're listing other events, they've done their listing testimonials from happy clients that they've worked with, and they have a track record. They've been doing this for a while, they could get you a lot farther than someone who's just starting out and again, they're probably going to be charging you more that someone who's just starting out as a pr agent, but you do get what you pay for in this instance and ask for references and again read your contract carefully, so I think I don't need to go more into why that's important, but all of these are really important tio keeping in mind as you're paying anyone was helping you with your business, not just pr firms. So this one of my favorite ways to get your products on celebrities and this is something that I've personally done and I've had some success with, and I love it because it's the least expensive method and all they have to do is find out their mailing address, which I'm going to share with you, how to do that, and you really are directly responsible for your success and all of us love tio, do something for our business and see results that we can actually measure and it's such a great way to be proud of what you're doing and to know that what you're doing is actually impacting your business. And it does feel really great when I got the note back from tori spelling it felt awesome and I'm sure you've you know, you fall in the same whites, I guess great this is really cool I couldn't I could get used to this, right? Um yeah, so it does feel really great to do by the cons are that it can take a lot of time so you have to find out their addresses, make sure it's the correct one put a nice package together, take it to the post office or fedex or wherever you're going and wait for it and then follow up and it really could be a few weeks process so it could take a little bit more time on dh then also you don't have any direct connection to celebrities you don't know them, you don't know who they are, you don't know what they like or what they don't like, so you're sort of sending it out there hoping that something great will come back but again the results are not guaranteed um but just like with publicity, none of this is really guaranteed, but the more you put it out there, the more likely you are to get back some results so just to put things in perspective when I did my celebrity gifting campaign the first time I sent out thirty t shirts to thirty celebrities and I think I got back maybe two responses and then I did it again a couple months later to another thirty celebrities and I got back maybe four responses so it was a total of maybe five or six celebrities out of sixty that I had sent so again not everyone's going to right back and that everyone is going to give you thank you note so you do have to think ok do I have the money to send out sixty different samples or twenty different ones and to not might not get anything back in return? So look at your budget look at how much product you have sometimes what I used to do with my t shirt business is that whenever I was about to launch a new line and I had a whole bunch of inventory that I needed tio get rid of and make room for the new line then for me that was a great time to be like ok, what can I do with this t shirts celebrity gifting so that's when I would give my t shirts to celebrities because I knew I needed to get them out so I could make more room so you could look at it that way to when when it works for you and if you're not constantly launching the products than you're obviously going to have to decide if you have enough product on hand to send them or not yes, with this b. Can you write something like that off? If you if you gift product, be under your marketing, uh, when you categorize it under your county, it was exactly it would be under marketing and advertising expenses. So you could totally write that off.