1
Impact of Celebrity
Endorsements on
Overall Brand
{Searching for the Right Match}
CONTENTS P.No.
1. Itroduction 2
2. Synopsis 4
3. Defining the Meaning & Scope of the Topic 7
4. Important Celebrity Attributes 9
5. The Need for Celebrity Endorsement 10
6. Scope of Celebrity Endorsement 11
7. Impact of Celebrity Endorsement 13
8. The Process of Celebrity Endorsement 18
9. Risks Associated With Celeb. Endorsement 21
10. Celebrity Selection 22
11. Celebrity Endorsement: The Issues Involved 24
12. Framework of Endorsement Program 26
13. Why Celebrity Endorsement Fails? 32
14. Kinds of Celebrity-hood 40
15. RESEARCH & ANALYSIS 42
16. Cases Analysis Using the Framework 55
17. Conclusion 58
18. References 67
Introduction
The modern world of marketing communication has become colorful and inundated with advertisements, and it is hard to get noticed. It is an uphill task for the designer of an advertising campaign to differentiate itself from others and attract viewers’ attention.
Everyday consumers are exposed to thousands of voices and images in magazines, newspapers, and on billboards, websites, radio and television. Every brand attempts to steal at least a fraction of an unsuspecting person’s time to inform him or her of the amazing and different attributes of the product at hand. The challenge of the marketer is to find a hook that will hold the subject’s attention.In helping to achieve this, use of celebrity endorsers is a widely used marcom strategy.
In this jet age, people tend to ignore all commercials and advertisements while flipping through the magazines and newspapers or viewing TV. But even then, the glamour of a celebrity seldom goes unnoticed. Thus, celebrity endorsement in advertisement and its impact on the overall brand is of great significance. In this process, the companies hire celebrities from a particular field to feature in its advertisement campaigns. The promotional features and images of the product are matched with the celebrity image, which tends to persuade a consumer to fix up his choice from a plethora of brands. Although this sounds pretty simple, but the design of such campaigns and the subsequent success in achieving the desired result calls for an in-depth understanding of the product, the brand objective, choice of a celebrity, associating the celebrity with the brand, and a framework for measuring the effectiveness.
Companies invest large sums of money to align their brands and themselves with endorsers. Such endorsers are seen as dynamic with both attractive and likeable qualities and companies plan that these qualities are transferred to products via marcom activities. Furthermore, because of their fame, celebrities serve not only to create and maintain attention but also to achieve high recall rates for marcom messages in today’s highly cluttered environments.
Aristotle said, “Beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of introduction.” This could aptly summarize why innumerable products are endorsed by celebrities, with or without a significant need or benefit from the same.
Similarly every product has an image. The consumer tries to consume a brand which has the maximum fit with his/her own personality/image. The celebrity endorser fits in between these two interactions, where he tries to bring the image of the product closer to the expectation of the consumer, by transferring some of the cultural meanings residing in his image to the product.
“The model of Celebrity Endorsement”, is essentially based on the theoretical framework of Classical Conditioning given by Pavlov.
Upfront, this seems like a very effective weapon in mature and saturated markets, which differentiates products from those of the competitors by clearing the clutter and reaching the consumer. But is the impact so significant, or are the celebrities themselves adding to the clutter?
Through this paper we primarily try to evaluate the impact of any celebrity endorsement campaign on the brand by analyzing it through our “Impact-Analysis Framework” consisting of - brand, consumer and the celebrity as well as the interactions between the Consumer - Endorser and Brand - Endorser.
And finally, is the investment in a celebrity commensurate to the returns earned by the company?
If the world were full of all wise men and all wise women; we would have never heard of a term called “advertisement”. And then good products would have found the right customers and grown to prosperity. Firms would have worked out a mathematical formula to sell and succeed. But the buying process isn’t rational; and so is this world.
Indians are die-hard movie and sport buffs; and this aspect of the consumers has invited the concept of “Celebrity Endorsement” to the world of advertisement. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of Celebrity Endorsement in the process of brand-building by taking appropriate examples from the advertising landscape.
Synopsis
“Successful branding programs are based on the concept of singularity. The objective is to create in the mind of the prospect the perception that there is no other product on the market quite like your product.”
- Al Ries & Laura Ries
Indian advertising started with the hawkers who used to call out their wares right from the days when cities and markets first began. With this evolved a strategy that tried to benefit from the emotional attachment of the admirers or the fans of the celebrities; in the form of celebrity endorsement.
Paper tries to understand the process of consumer psychology and impact of celebrity endorsement on the overall process of brand building. The in-depth study of various models brings to light the complexities pertaining to celebrity endorsement. A symbiotic model has been proposed to define: how to make celebrity endorsement a win-win situation for both the brand and the brand-endorser. “Brand” is the most valuable asset of any firm. Any thoughtless adventure can be like the Sword of Damocles. It’s the “strong idea” of promotion which is a more strategic means of brand-building; which can be an economical alternative over celebrity endorsement.
“It doesn’t matter how new an idea is; what matters is how new it becomes.”
- Elias Canetti
“If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language in which they think.”
- David Ogilvy
This paper rifles through the concept of celebrity endorsement and provides insights on what it is and how the increasing number of endorsements, throw a valid question to the consumers. Is there a science behind the choice of these endorsers or is it just by the popularity measurement? What are the reasons which lead to impact of celebrity endorsement on brands?
Through research and analysis, this paper emerges with a 14-point model which can be used as blue-print criteria and can be used by brand managers for selecting celebrities, and capitalizes the celebrity resource through 360 degree brand communication since our research proposes it as the foundation brick of the impact of celebrity endorsement. Our study reveals that the impact of celebrity endorsement is proportional to the 14 factors discussed in the model.
The success of a brand through celebrity endorsement is a cumulative of the 14 attributes. Greater the score of the below greater are the chances of getting close to the desired impact.
The general belief among advertisers is that brand communication messages delivered by celebrities and famous personalities generate a higher appeal, attention and recall than those executed by non-celebrities. The quick message-reach and impact are all too essential in today’s highly competitive environment.
We put forward certain ideas like ‘positioning by association’, ‘diminishing celebrity utility’ and the Multiplier Effect which show the triangular relationship between the brand, the consumer and the celebrity.
Now, despite the potential benefits derived from celebrity endorsements, they increase a marketer’s risk manifolds and should be treated with full attention and aptitude. A brand should be cautious when employing celebrities to ensure promise believability and delivery of the intended effect. The growing importance of mythical characters as celebrities and their sway over the target segments are ample proof of public demand for icons to look up to. As the celebrities traverse from a mere commercial presence to public welfare message endorsements, a whole new dimension is added to this process and helps us in achieving a holistic view of the impact which celebrities generate in every sphere and segment through their well-versed endorsements.
Celebrities have also been in demand having succeeded in being effective by rising above the clutter & grabbing the attention and focus of the consumer. They also succeed in creating an aspiration in the minds of the consumer to acquire what their favorite celebrity endorses.
However, the above might be too simplistic a solution for multitudes of marketing problems in the real world. Hence to analyse how effective any Celebrity Endorsement campaign is, we need to look at the various factors which impact its success. Through this paper, we have developed an analytical structure called “Impact-Analysis Framework” comprising three main factors - Brand, Consumer, Endorser and the interaction between Brand - Endorser and Consumer-Endorser.
Further, we apply our framework to a series of celebrity campaigns to gauge the reasons for the success and failures of each to check the validity of our model. In our analysis, we also came across factors which have impacted campaigns in very specific terms and hence cannot be generalized; to elucidate the same, we have presented analysis of some of these unique cases which have been marked by diverse outcomes.
Defining the Meaning & Scope of the Topic
Branding & Celebrity Endorsement
Today, use of celebrities as part of marketing communication strategy is fairly common practice for major firms in supporting corporate or brand imagery.
What is a Brand?
Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, once said, “Our most valuable assets are our intangible assets.” The intangible asset he was referring to is a brand. The Dictionary of Business & Management defines a brand as: “a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination of them, intended to identify goods or services of one seller or a group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitor”.
Definition of Celebrities
Celebrities are people who enjoy specific public recognition by a large number of certain groups of people. They have some characteristic attributes like attractiveness, extraordinary lifestyle or special skills that are not commonly observed. Thus, it can be said that within a society, celebrities generally differ from the common people and enjoy a high degree of public awareness.
According to Friedman and Friedman, a “celebrity endorser is an individual who is known by the public for his or her achievements in areas other than that of the product class endorsed”. Compared to other endorser types, famous people always attach a greater degree of attention, recall and loyalty.
According to Melissa St. James, a doctoral fellow and marketing instructor at The George Washington University, “Studies show that using celebrities can increase consumers’ awareness of the ad, capture [their] attention and make ads more memorable.”
In this age of intense competition, where capturing a position in the consumers’ mind space is extremely tough, celebrity endorsements give an extra edge to the companies for holding the viewers’ attention. Celebrities can catalyze brand acceptance and provide the enormous momentum that brands require by endorsing the intrinsic value to the brand.
“The term Celebrity refers to an individual who is known to the public (actor, sports figure, entertainer, etc.) for his or her achievements in areas other than that of the product class endorsed” (Friedman and Friedman, 1979). This is true for classic forms of celebrities.
Like actors (e.g., Amitabh Bachchan, Shahrukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai,, Preity Zinta, Aamir Khan and Pierce Brosnan).
Models (e.g., Mallaika Arora, Milind Soman, Naomi Campbell, etc),
Television Personalities (Husain, Smriti Irani),
Sports figures (e.g., Sachin Tendulkar, Sania Mirza, Anna Kournikova, Michael Schumacher, Tiger Woods, etc),
Entertainers (e.g., Cyrus Broacha, Oprah Winfrey,),
And pop-stars (e.g., Madonna, Shakira).
But also for less obvious groups like businessmen (e.g., Vijay Mallya, Bill Gates) or politicians.Clebrities appear in public in different ways. First, they appear in public when fulfilling their profession, e.g., Vishwanathan Anand, who plays chess in front of an audience. Furthermore, celebrities appear in public by attending special celebrity events, e.g., award ceremonies, inaugurations or world premieres of movies. In addition, they are present in news, fashion magazines, and tabloids, which provide second source information on events and the ‘private life’ of celebrities through mass-media channels (e.g., Smriti Irani being regularly featured in various publications). Last but not least, celebrities act as spokes-people in advertising to promote products and services, which is referred to celebrity endorsement.
Important Celebrity Attributes
While selecting a celebrity as endorser, the company has to decide the promotional objective of the brand and how far the celebrity image matches with it. The selection is in fact a collaboration, from which both the company and the celebrity gains.
The most important attribute for a celebrity endorser is the trustworthiness. The target audience must trust that a celebrity carries a particular image and it must match with the product.
The second attribute in order of importance is likeability. The celebrity also must be accepted as a popular icon by a large cross section of the audience.
Similarity between the target audience and the celebrity is the third important attribute. A person well-known in a society can have greater impact than a celebrity of a different world. If the endorser and receiver have similar needs, goals, interests and lifestyles, the position advocated by the brand communication is better understood and received. Similarity is also used to create a situation where the consumer feels empathy for the person shown in the commercial. The bond of similarity between the endorser and the receiver increases the level of persuasiveness.
Apart from that, expertise is also believed to be another important attribute.
Definition of Celebrity Endorsement
According to Friedman & Friedman, a “celebrity endorser is an individual who is known by the public for his or her achievements in areas other than that of the product class endorsed.” So, in the Coco-Cola advertisement; actor Amir Khan is the celebrity endorser for the product or brand called Coke, and this process is referred to as Celebrity Endorsement. Celebrities might endorse as a brand ambassador or a brand face.
Difference between Brand Ambassador & Brand Face
A Brand Ambassador would be one who is not only a spokesperson for the brand or is just appearing as a testimonial for the brand’s benefits. He/she is an integral part of the brand persona and helps to build an emotionale, which goes beyond just appearing on TV commercials.