Advantages of Celebrity endorsement
1. Influence Consumer Purchases
The affinity consumers have for certain celebrities can greatly influence their purchases. People may have the attitude, “If the product is good enough for her, it’s good enough for me.” This philosophy is often the impetus behind advertisements for makeup, skin creams, hair products and attire. Consumers want the wavy hair of a local celebrity, for example. Hence, they purchase the brand that the celebrity uses to achieve her hair’s fullness and bounce. Local consumers may also desire the same soft drink as their team’s best baseball player. Essentially, the testimonial of the local celebrity adds instant credibility to a small company’s product.
2. Build Awareness
Celebrities in advertising build brand awareness, according to “Supermarket News,” a publication covering the food distribution industry. And they build it much more quickly than traditional types of advertising. Brand awareness measures the percentage of people who are familiar with a particular brand. Small businesses spend lots of money and time for exposure to incrementally increase brand awareness among consumers. The use of a local celebrity can do much to enhance consumers’ awareness and understanding of what a small business offers.
3. Position a Brand
Some small companies use celebrities in advertising to position their brands. Product positioning places a company’s products in the best possible light in the minds of a target group. For example, a small investment firm may use a well-respected and retired local disc jockey to market a retirement plan for people ages 50 and over. The fact that the disc jockey falls in the consumers’ age group and has a good reputation in the community makes the company’s product and message more believable.
4. Attract New Users
One challenge small companies face is finding new users for their products. When a well-known face endorses your brand, it automatically attracts new target audience – the die hard fans of the celebrity. People who would have not much cared about your brand will now get open to try it at least once because their favourite sport-star, actor, politician or model is endorsing it. The bigger the celebrity, the larger audience base you get to invite in.
5. Breathe Life Into Failing Brand
The use of a celebrity in an advertisement may also help to breathe life into a failing brand. For example, a small soap manufacturer might think about dropping a brand or product, especially if production and overhead costs are leaving little or no profit. However, the use of a celebrity to tout the benefits of the brand could help create new interest and excitement in consumers.
6. Builds Trust and Credibility for your Brand
People are emotionally and morally connected with their idols. Celebrities are no less than any idols for them. In this highly populated world, every celebrity that you’ll come across will have over a million fans, and thus getting the thumbs up from them should bring a lot of success for your business. Now when these millions of people will join your brand, your brand’s market value and reputation will automatically improve in the shortest period of time.
Cons of Celebrity Marketing
1. Images change
Celebrities make mistakes. And when they do, they can affect the brands they endorse. In 2009, Tiger Woods’ public image crumbled after his infidelity with a number of women, hit the news. General Motors, Gillette, Accenture, dropped Tiger to avoid negative perception. Nike stuck around and lost customers.
2. Celebrities May Eclipse Your Brand
Some celebrities are really huge and their popularity can instantly overshadow the brand. If this happens, spending millions of dollars on such endorsements starts to make no sense at all. Some advertisements even focus on celebrities too much, that there’s absolutely no brand recall. Also, if the media is focusing more on the next movie of the celebrity on your brand’s press meet, then this is a sign that you’ve made a wrong choice.
3. Celebrity Endorsements are Expensive
Now this is a very obvious point. So unless you are ready to shed millions and billions of dollars from your company’s revenue, don’t think about going down this road. Celebrity marketing is a huge investment and then there’ll be no turning back.
