James Cowling, prweek.com, 25 October 2010, 9:34am

Celebrities should be 'open and upfront' about promoting brands via Twitter, according to a leading PR practitioner.

Range Rover: launches UK Twitter campaign

Weekend reports revealed that stars such as Snoop Doggy Dogg can command up to £3,000 a tweet for plugging products.

The news comes as Range Rover today becomes the first UK brand to launch a Twitter campaign using celebrity endorsement. The brand is using stars including former GMTV presenter Ben Shephard and model Daisy Lowe.

British entrepreneur Arnie Gollov-Sing, has signed 5,000 names to promote products such as Coke and Microsoft in America and plans to launch the service here. James Herring of Taylor Herring, whose work includes promoting the Apprentice TV series, said: ‘Promoting products via Twitter can only work for celebrities if you are upfront and open with your fans.

‘If you announce you have signed a big deal, it will not come as a surprise if you start announcing your love for a product on Twitter – but if you try and keep it under the radar, people will not see it in the same way.’

US celebrities must accompany any paid-for tweets with the words ‘ad’ or ‘spon’, but there are no such rules in Britain. Sascha Deshmukh, managing director of MHP, said: ‘There have always been celebrity ambassadors for products – this is just the latest way of promotion».

‘The question is whether the celebrity resonates with the audience and the product.

‘Using social media is now a core part of promotion – there is now a range of different ways on which consumers decide to purchase, compared to one method of advertising 15 years ago.’