Celebrity Endorsements
Jan 19th, 2011 by amandaliu
Every day as I commute to school by public transportation such as Translink, and Canada line, I always come across and see advertisements with non-celebrative people on ads endorsing for a wide range of products or services. For example, I usually see an ad campaign mounted on Canada line’s skytrain from a travel agency, using flight attendants to represent and endorse its services to the public. In addition to using non-celebrative figures, other companies like Beard Papa, a well-known franchise which mainly sell dessert products like cream puffs, uses their own franchise managers to publicize its product to its consumers.
Celebrity endorsement has been a widely used in marketing strategies nowadays and is successful, to some extent, in advertising. When companies use celebrity endorsements, they cause many people to subconsciously create a connection between the celebrity and its product, therefore persuading consumers to follow the trend; possibly believing that “if a celebrity uses such a product, it must be exceptional”. Perhaps, companies who rely on celebrities, who are highly recognized by almost everyone, could possibly define the company’s market position and able to build their reputation and brand in the market in a short period of time.
However, I personally think it’s not a good idea to always use celebrity endorsements to advertise a products or a service. If a company uses a highly recognized celebrity, for instance, Britney Spears, to endorse for goods or product line, in this case Pepsi, it would negatively affect the company because the celebrity is extremely famous that all audience’s focus and attention now goes to the celebrity and the product is forgotten. *1
However, the travel agency and Beard Papa’s ads on the skytrain was a brilliant and successful idea because these non-celebrative people that were chosen, not only relates to the product that they represent for, but also create similar effects as celebrity endorsements and all attention would now be focused on the company’s products or services.
*1: Main idea based on the following article: http://arunkottolli.blogspot.com/2006/07/celebrity-endorsments-as-strategy.html