10.30.2007

Celebrity Spokespeople: Not worth the risk

While flipping through a popular magazine or channel surfing when watching television, it is more than likely that you will see at least one celebrity endorsement. Since modern advertising began, famous faces from Halle Berry (in a Revlon ad at right) to William Shatner have been paid for their celebrity seals of approval for a variety of products. However, despite the initial attraction these types of ads can have, companies may want to think twice before launching a celebrity-driven campaign. Although a celebrity spokesperson may appear to be an easy way to gain brand recognition and credibility, this tactic may not be as effective as previously believed, and the many cons can actually do more harm than good. While using a celebrity can over valuable face time to a cause or product, the celebrity can oftentimes overshadow the message, negatively affect the message due to bad behavior, or not live up to their hype.

The appeal of using a Hollywood star as the face of a product is simple: advertisers believe that if a celebrity uses Product X, consumers will want to use it as well. They argue that using a famous face is an easy and effective way of reaching a broad consumer audience: doors to talk shows, interviews, and other high-exposure outlets open without so much as a push. By presenting the person as an expert through means of a testimonial, people are likely to perceive a greater amount of product credibility and therefore purchase the product because “if it’s good enough for a celebrity, it’s good enough for me.” However, this is not always true in reality.

Recent research by the University of Bath and the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland determined that consumers’ main motivation when purchasing is to keep up with peers. Researchers found that people were more swayed by an advertisement with a fictional testimonial character than by a celebrity testimonial. “This is because many people feel the need to keep up with the Joneses when they buy,” said Professor Brett Martin, an instructor at the University of Bath. To them, it is more important that people in the same peer group as themselves think a product is cool or fashionable than whether Jennifer Aniston thinks so. Therefore, the money a company shells out to a celebrity is sometimes not even worth it in the first place.

In addition, using a non-fictional character who is already in the public eye can sometimes backfire. Firstly, because celebrities are already famous for other things, there is an extremely high risk that the image and/or actions of the spokesperson will overshadow the message the company is attempting to disseminate. Jessica Simpson’s up and down love life, for example, clearly takes precedence over her Pizza Hut sponsorship in mass media. Secondly, bad celebrity behavior is even worse for a campaign. Although advertisers attempt to “avoid controversy like the plague,” unexpected situations often arise. While Nick Lachey was promoting the Mastercard “Major League Baseball Dreams” event this past summer, nude photographs of Lachey and his girlfriend Vanessa Minnillo in a hot tub in Mexico surfaced. Although this poor timing would have been bad enough, it turned into a bigger scandal when while doing a television interview on Fox’s “Good Day New York,” Lachey’s video feed went out the moment the anchor began asking Lachey about the photographs. The fact that Lachey was seemingly attempting to avoid talking about the situation completely overshadowed the message he was being paid to promote, and more people knew that he ended the interview than that he was promoting anything at all. Finally, sometimes celebrity spokespeople are unable to fulfill their promotional roles and end up not living up to the hype surrounding their campaign. Sadly, this was the case with Anna Nicole Smith (pictured at left), the face of Trimspa before she died. After Smith passed away, Trimspa was forced to remarket their product and attempt to disassociate their name with Smith’s image.

In all, having a celebrity as the face of an ad campaign can have some positive attributes. However, the risk associated with famous people outweighs those attributes. Instead of seeking out a celebrity, advertisers should focus on selling their product through other means.

1 comment:

CAO said...

It has never crossed my mind that using celebrities, or as you call them, “non-fictionals”, could be almost detrimental to advertising companies. I do agree with you in that it almost lowers the celebrities’ level of performance when doing commercials for big brand companies such as Revlon or Pizza Hut. And now that you mention it, I do in fact associate myself more and am more opt to buy products with fictional, everyday characters over high life celebrities because of how I compete with people in the same peer group as me.

I also thought that the use of your first image was nice as it help deliver your argument. In topic of your argument, it was very enticing and I thought you stated your case very well. What I think could have upped your post is if you gave some expert examples of why people believe that using celebrities are good for advertising, and then state an argument against it with other expert findings. In fact, your overall blog appears to be clearly one sided, and in your last paragraph you mention that “the face of an ad campaign can have some positive attributes.” Here would have been a great place to put in some example of what some positive attributes are. Other than this element, I enjoyed your post and thought it was very original and something that has never entered my mind.

 
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