Response to Kamilla Bekbulatova’s blog post Celebrity Endorsements: Is it Worth It?
In Kamilla’s post, she analyzes the affects of celebrity endorsement on sales of a product. If a popular celebrity endorses a product, then the affects are beneficial as many people are compelled to purchase the product to be “similar to their idol.” However, it can also have a negative outcome as celebrity who is unpopular can cause a product to do worse.
Most of the time, companies are able to select an appropriate celebrity who will represent their company best. However, even after choosing the right celebrity, there is always risk involved in the partnership. For example, a product’s success is often tied to the success of the celebrity’s career. Any scandals in the celebrity’s life could reflect badly upon the company and the product. In this Business Insider article, several celebrity endorsements that failed are shown. All of them failed because the celebrity had some kind of scandal ranging from drug use to declaring to be makeup free (despite being the face of a cosmetics company).
In my opinion, if a product is really strong, it shouldn’t need celebrity backing to sell to customers. However, that being said, for large companies such as Pepsi that can afford to pay millions to have Beyonce star in their ad campaigns, it adds a little more “fun” and “trendiness” to their products. Overall, I believe that large, established brands can benefit most from celebrity endorsement because they can afford the big names and their brand is already known so the celebrity will just increase hype for the brand rather than overpower it.
Sources:
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-13-worst-celebrity-endorsement-fails-2012-1?op=1
Image: http://blogs-images.forbes.com/jonathansalembaskin/files/2012/12/beyonce-pepsi-ad.jpeg