One could not imagine the current marketing world without celebrities endorsing different organisations’ products and services, especially when thinking about sports such as tennis and football. However, also organisations in other industries such as the food industry are making extensive use of celebrities to endorse their offerings.
Famous large companies include Coca Cola, which has used many different celebrities over time and recently made an endorsement deal with actress/musician Selena Gomez.
Selena Gomez/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/selenagomez/
Selecting the right celebrity with the right character to represent your brand can allow for greater brand awareness and boost your brand image. Customers are more inclined to buy products associated with celebrities, as they tend to match their own interests with celebrities they see as an idol and according to Dwivedi, McDonald and Johnson (2014), this can be a very promising way of advertising.
Especially using social media channels, as celebrities can reach large audiences online and in marketing nowadays, it is crucial to be active on social media. But what is actually meant by a celebrity endorser? Fullerton (2007) defines celebrity endorsement as the ‘payment to a spokesperson that will recommend and encourage the purchase of a marketer’s product’.
So how do you select the right celebrity for your brand?
In order for celebrity endorsement to benefit your brand in terms of enhanced brand awareness and a boosting of your brand image, you will firstly need to ensure that you get the right ‘fit’ of celebrity for your promoted product (Silvera and Austad, 2004). If you were a sports brand, then using athletes as endorsers for your products would be very suitable as it makes the advertising seem more genuine. A prime example in this case, would be Cristiano Ronaldo’s endorsement contract with Nike.
Cristiano Ronaldo/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cristiano/
Read more about how about how valuable Cristiano Ronaldo is to Nike: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2016/12/02/cristiano-ronaldos-1-billion-nike-deal-is-a-bargain-for-sportswear-giant/#4fd1aa8c5a91
Furthermore, you should aim to create a deal with a celebrity that has a strong social media presence and great popularity, as only this will provide you with value and enhance your brand awareness online.
Benefits of using celebrity endorsement
There are many benefits of using celebrities to endorse your products but the obvious ones include the wide target audience that can be reached via social media. The more followers a celebrity has, the greater the social influence and a study by Jin and Phua (2014) provides an example of twitter accounts with over 30 million followers in 2013, which belonged to celebrities such as Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber. The latter now has 91.9 million followers, so one can imagine the huge social influence he has today and the value someone like him could bring to a company.
Justin Bieber/Twitter – https://twitter.com/justinbieber?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Another benefit of using celebrity endorsement includes the positive impact it can have on a company’s finances and brand value (Erdogan, 2001). This is due to the way consumers view the celebrities they look up to. Celebrities are seen as trustworthy, able to persuade and likeable (Freiden, 1984), which results in consumers being convinced that celebrities’ affections for a brand are always completely genuine.
The third useful benefit would be the ability to use celebrity endorsement to reposition your brand, as consumers will associate the endorser’s characteristics with your product (Erdogan, 1999). For example, this could mean using an athlete to endorse your restaurant brand in order to promote a health-awareness message and highlight your new positioning to consumers.
Drawbacks of using celebrity endorsement
Whilst the use of celebrities endorsing your products and services may be very beneficial to your firm, it can also provide some difficulties. Firstly, if a celebrity is picked that is too popular; it might overshadow the brand and not actually achieve the desired increase in value (Erdogan, 2001).
Furthermore, celebrities might change their views and who they are as a person over time and this image change might result in wrong representation of your brand. If they are also endorsing other brands, there might be conflicting and confusing views as to what they stand for and meant to represent for your brand.
Lastly, cost is also a very deciding factor when seeking to use celebrities to endorse your brand. Of course, the bigger the celebrity the more expensive this marketing technique will be. As an example, Nike’s lifetime endorsement deal with football star Cristiano Ronaldo is worth as much as $1 billion (Badenhausen, 2016). Therefore, one should consider the large amount of cash required for celebrity endorsers that have a huge social following and influence.
However, it should not be forgotten that celebrities just like Ronaldo provide value to the involved company, that way exceeds the amount of money spent on the creation of such an endorsement deal.
To summarise, how useful is celebrity endorsement to promote your brand via social media?
Overall, it can be said that despite the large costs involved and risks such as image changes of celebrities, if the use of celebrity endorsement is planned carefully it is very beneficial.
Nowadays, brand awareness and e-WOM are crucial for any firm to survive and the use of celebrities to endorse your brand and boost your brand image can be very advantageous. It allows using their wide reach and social influence to persuade consumers to purchase your products and create a latent need for your offerings.
Lastly, here are five things to bear in mind when looking to use a celebrity endorser for your brand:
- Don’t be tempted to just pick any celebrity – make sure it is the right fit
- Ensure that your brand is represented correctly
- Be ready to spend large sums of cash for big celebrities
- Make sure you know the celebrity’s reach – look for ones with a strong social media presence
- Ensure that the celebrity continues to be involved with your brand
Read more about this here: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/246361
References
Dwivedi, A., McDonald, R. and Johnson, L. (2014). The impact of a celebrity endorser’s credibility on consumer self-brand connection and brand evaluation. J Brand Manag, 21(7-8), pp.559-578.
Erdogan, B.Z. (1999), “Celebrity endorsement: a literature review”, Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 15, pp. 291-324.
Erdogan, B.Z. (2001), “Selecting celebrity endorsers: the practitioner’s perspective”, Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 41 No. 3, pp. 39-48.
Freiden, J.B. (1984), “Advertising spokesperson effects: an examination of endorser type and gender on two audiences”, Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 24 No. 5, pp. 33-41.
Fullerton, Sam (2007), Sports Marketing, New York: McGraw-Hill/Irvine.
Jin, S. and Phua, J. (2014). Following Celebrities’ Tweets About Brands: The Impact of Twitter-Based Electronic Word-of-Mouth on Consumers’ Source Credibility Perception, Buying Intention, and Social Identification With Celebrities. Journal of Advertising, 43(2), pp.181-195.
Silvera, D. H. and Austad, B. (2004) “Factors predicting the effectiveness of celebrity endorsement advertisements,” European Journal of Marketing [Online], 38(11/12), pp.1509–1526