The concept of celebrity branding is deeply misunderstood and have no real connection with reality in Ghana—and even though I am yet to locate any commanding celebrity brands in Ghana, I know countless celebrities who are dead right they have powerful brands.

The test of a strong brand, be it corporate or personal is not what the owners think of their establishment, but how eager others or respected brands want to associate themselves and their products with that particular brand…

I wouldn’t mention any of our celebrities who claim to have a brand, though non-existing, because, I do not for sure want anyone thinking I am taking a big hit at him or her—and secondly, because, every one of our stars claim to have a brand, including, Kyeiwaa…

The reason why branding is key in marketing is that, proper branding does not only result to increase in sales of a product but other products associated with the brand. To me, this is where you are able to separate the chaff from the goodies…

At the international front, most well branded celebrities will sleep in the most expensive hotels anywhere in the world for free— and the hotels will be more than happy to give them all they want for free. Reason being, they want their hotel brands to be associated with such personalities to amplify the incoming sales.

I can’t think of any hotel in the world (including our little Ghana) that an actor like Denzel Washington’s team will write to and request a free one week stay in return for the hotel being able to advertise on their website that Denzel stayed there—and the hotel will refused. In fact, the hotel will even offer to pay him for the free stay. This is the power of a well placed brand.

When we talk about branding, our Ghanaian celebrities are so convinced beyond reasonable doubt that they have well intact brands when they cannot even score a free hotel stay for themselves in the cheapest hotel in Accra.

The real benefit of being a well branded celebrity in any part of the world is the fact that, you do not have to pay for what the ordinary “Joes” will have to pay to acquire—and this is because, business owners have faith in your brand and want to have that sort of association.

I know countless Ghanaian celebrities whose faces cannot sell anything, including their own songs and movies—yet they claim to have millions of fans and on top of it, well vested brands.

For some reason, I think the misplaced understanding of the concept of branding among our Ghanaian celebrities rests on the assumption that, dressing in fine clothes and having people LIKE your facebook pages means you have a well glued together brand, with enviable prospects—and yet, they will struggle to get Auntie Munni’s wakyee for free, using their brands.

I have not forgotten about the fact that some big telecommunication companies have bought into the non-existing brands of these celebrities and many more corporate bodies will be forced to spend money on Ghanaian celebrity brands. But the truth is, most of these companies had no choice. Wanting to set up in Ghana means you need someone to be on your product, even if the brand is pretty cheap—because you cannot bring another person from a different country to do it. And mostly, the returns these companies make from the celebrity brands are far less than what they spend on them. It is just a necessary inconvenience for their business and as such, that cannot be used to ascertain the strength of any of the celebrity brands in Ghana.

Any person who will try to get a free airline ticket for a Ghanaian Celebrity on the grounds that, the celebrity taking the flight will be able to boost sales for the airline would probably hit a rock…

So the test for a strong celebrity brand is what the brand can do when there are no necessary inconveniences but a stable bargaining power.

Perhaps, it is time some of these celebrities who seem to admire the concept of branding take a close look at the weakness of their so called brands and take the necessary steps needed to fortify their images.

Until our Ghanaian celebrities begin to easily get free hotel accommodations at let’s say Golden Tulip purely on the grounds that the hotel wants to associate itself with their stay or until their many social media followers begin to reward them financially by purchasing products associated with them, their brands may be seen as existing but as cheap as the value of toilet paper.

Brands reside within the hearts and minds of people, being the sum total of their experiences and perceptions and therefore, our celebrities must spend time to invest, research, define and build well placed brands—then they can start talking about valuable brands.

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