After reading Hannah Martin‘s blog about Jane Lynch starring in a commercial for Healthy Choice food, I began to wonder about celebrity endorsements and whether they are actually effective or not.
First a little bit about celebrity endorsements. Celebrity endorsements have been around as long as celebrities have been. Celebrities use their faces and names to sell products for a huge chunk of change. The idea behind it is pretty simple. People like celebrities and think they are cool, so if a celebrity likes a product and thinks it’s cool, the public will think so too. However does this really work? Can celebrities spread their “cool” to different products?
Celebrities can support products through print ads in magazines, T.V commercials, Facebook, Twitter and many other creative ways. Celebrities now appear in one fifth of all ads. Social media has raised celebrity endorsement to a whole new level. Now celebrities can endorse products anytime – anywhere. For example, 50 cent bought 30 million shares in H&H imports, then tweeted his 3.8 million followers to buy the stock. Because of this tweet, the stock rose 240% making 50 cent approximately 10 million dollars.
H&H imports shot up after 50’s tweet!
However is this success shared in other celebrity endorsements? The answer is not clear. There have been many studies on celebrity endorsements and there is no conclusive evidence that celebrity endorsements actually sell products. In fact it can actually have the opposite effect. A good example of this is Tiger Woods who used to endorse Gatorade, but lost the 1 million dollar contract after his sex scandal.
Tiger had his own brand of Gatorade before his sex scandal.
Present day consumers are smart. They know that behind every celebrity endorsement, there is a money exchange. I think that ruins the “cool” factor behind some celebrity endorsements and may explain why they don’t always work. However, people will pay ridiculous amounts of money for things that celebrities they love own or use because it makes them feel closer to the celebrity. Marketing campaigns focused around celebrity endorsements need to be centered around making consumers feel connected to the celebrity, or else they won’t work. An example of successful celebrity marketing is Ke$ha endorsement of lifestyle condoms. She has made a fortune glorifying a sleazy and slutty lifestyle, and now is making even more money plastering her face all over condoms.
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