Scales, who in another life starred as John Cleese's wife Sybil Fawlty in the classic sitcom 'Fawlty Towers', is reckoned to have generated an extra 拢2.2bn in sales for Tesco, according to a new book by IPA director general Hamish Pringle.
Pringle's book 'Celebrity Sells' looks at 700 celebrity campaigns but names the annoying Scales ads created by Lowe for Tesco as the top celebrity ad, followed by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO Jamie Oliver campaign for rival Sainsbury's, which is estimated to have helped boost sales by 拢1.12bn over 18 months.
According to the book, Scales' success is a marked difference to her former co-star Cleese, who misfired in an earlier supermarket campaign. Cleese starred in the "Value to shout about" campaign for Sainsbury's, which was dropped after failing to boost sales. It went on to be named one of the most irritating campaigns by Marketing.
Pringle says that the secret to the success of the work of Scales and Oliver is the chatty nature of the commercials, which consumers find easy to engage with.
However he tempers this by saying that signing up a celebrity is not a sure sign of success.
"There's no evidence that celebrity campaigns are any more popular or have any more of an impact on sales than those that don't feature celebrities. Signing up a celebrity is not a recipe for success."
Other top performing celebrities in Pringle's book are Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, who starred in the 1990s BMP DDB "Be a smarter investor at the Alliance & Leicester" campaign, and Bob Hoskins, who featured in the AMV BBDO "It's good to talk" campaign for BT.
In his book Pringle compares adspend with sales and then takes into account how well the campaign was received by the public.
Celebrities who fared less well are not always some of the worst ads but suffer in other ways. For instance, one of the best loved campaigns of recent years, the BT ads featuring Maureen Lipman's "Beattie", failed to deliver as well as the Hoskins ads.
Hoskins is estimated to have generated 拢297m for BT, compared with Lipman who bought in far less for the telecoms giant.
If you have an opinion on this or any other issue raised on Brand Republic, join the debate in the .