Artiste Brand Endorsements: Who negotiates what?

Brand endorsement is one of the channels through which celebrities worldwide make money.

In Ghana, it’s been the in-thing for highly rated music, movie, radio and television personalities to get signed onto labels that need some kind of mileage, appreciation and visibility.

The endorsement usually comes in the form of appearing in television or radio commercials, or being used as faces on billboards among other mediums of advertisement and marketing.

Most Ghanaian musicians are signed onto a brand or another. However, the trend whereby most are not able to perform at events sponsored by competing brands, is worrying.

Tinny and Edem could not perform at the “The Versatile Show” headlined by Okyeame Kwame, an MTN brand icon, because they are signed onto GLO, a competing brand. A recorded performance of Tinny was rather projected on the LED screens for patrons to watch.

Nicky Minaj, a Pepsi ambassador will be a judge on the upcoming season of American Idol, a show sponsored by competing brand Coca Cola. How different did she and her team negotiate, I dare ask.

Is it the situation that our musicians and their management teams do not argue their cases out enough to make room for flexible clauses in the contracts they sign with these brands?

This certainly calls for a debate.