Celebrity endorsements, is it worth it?
By: Ni Kadek Virgina Nanda Wedasari (Student of International Marketing Program)
Media boom had made advertisers used unique ways to break through the ad clutter and provide sufficient motivation for their target market to pay attention and engage with the marketing message. One of the popular strategies of creatively breaking through the clutter is by using celebrities to endorse the company’s brand in the advertisement. Celebrities are popular people who have been found to be highly effective in product promotion.
No matter how successful a celebrity selection process, it can never guarantee the long-term favorable effects of celebrity endorsements. When a company signs on to a celebrity, it signs on to the possibility that he or she may become involved in an event that has a harmful effect on the spokesperson. The risk of a celebrity needs to be a concern that needs attention.
- Scandal
Celebrity endorsers are often viewed as risky business because their potential for involvement in undesirable circumstances whose repercussions can transfer to the brand and company they are endorsing. Widely publicized scandals such as murders, rapes, abused of substances, infidelity and etcetera strongly suggest that celebrity endorsers may at times become liabilities to the brands they endorsed (Till and Shimp, 1998).
- Expensive
Celebrity endorsements can be extremely expensive, not only in terms of the monetary payments to the celebrity but also in terms of intangibles such as how the celebrity may affect the image of the advertiser. While the economic impact of celebrity endorsements is important, perhaps of greater importance is the intangible impact.
- Issues of credibility
indicate that many consumers were skeptical of celebrities who were paid to provide positive information about endorsed brands. Very popular celebrities may end up endorsing multiple products risk overexposure, thus lessening the impact and distinctiveness of each product relationship.
- Celebrity overshadowing product
Another potential hazard of using a celebrity to endorse a company’s product is when the celebrity risks over shadowing the product endorsed. When the celebrity chosen is too popular, the consumers would focus their attention more on the celebrity at the expense of the product (Erdogan, Baker and Tagg, 2001).
The biggest risk of hiring celebrity endorser is when the celebrity is entangled in negative publicity. There is a dramatic growth of the amount of negative publicity about the celebrities in the marketplace. Therefore, advertisers using celebrity as advocate must be concerned with the celebrity’s public reputation as formed by the press, special interest groups or public investigations.
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