Daniella Gual ENC 1102

The Effectiveness of Celebrities in Advertisements

Introduction For many years, the practice of using celebrities as endorsers of products in advertisements has thrived. Even with off-the-chart prices, companies glamorize their product by using celebrities to relate to their product and sell it to the consumers. But do celebrity endorsements really bring in the big bucks or do people buy the products simply because of their current brand attitude? My annotated bibliography included journals from the past decade in which the effectiveness of celebrity endorsements is looked at through research, experiments and other conversations. Advertisers working to showcase a product in an ad look at this research to ensure they are picking the right celebrity for their audience. It is important to recognize the audience in order to be able to fully reach them to increase product sales and brand awareness. This is why I chose to focus the effectiveness of celebrities in advertisements and some key aspects.

Synthesis Celebrity significance is important when it comes to advertising and how relevant it will be to the product and the consumer. When the celebrity is relevant to the product, the celebrity becomes more credible to the consumer. (MartinSantana) In a study, Martin-Santana produced this study by implementing an

experimental magazine to test nine fictional advertisements for three different products of different brands with three different advertising styles. The results of her study show that each advertising style generates the greatest effectiveness depending on which product it is. The celebrities themselves dont increase effectiveness unless the consumer recognizes the celebrity. The existence of negative celebrity information, and the familiarity with the celebrity affect the effectiveness. (Shuart) This study was an efficient in showing the importance of choosing the right celebrity to advertise a product and this is where source credibility comes in. As a customer may have a negative view on a celebrity, no matter how the celebrity showcases the product, that negative view of the celebrity will affect their credibility. (Martin-Santana) When a consumer relies on the advertising to convince them to buy a product, it is of best interest to the company to put forth their best efforts to advertise the product effectively. With that being said, the right celebrity must be chosen for the celebrity to be credible to the consumer. (Shuart) To asses the effectiveness of sports endorser in advertisements, a study was done that used a sample of 222 college-aged students to see how effective sports celebrity endorsements are in ads. (Shuart) In his study he concluded that how effective the advertising is depends on some factors that had to be taken into consideration such as the three following; perceived expertise, trustworthiness and physical attractiveness. Perceived expertise ties closely with celebrity relevance. In order to be perceived as an expert in that product the celebrity has to be relevant to the product to have the necessary knowledge of the product. (Martin-Santana)

When talking about a consumers brand attitude, we are talking about how a consumer feels about a specific brand. Once established, brand attitude is difficult to change. (Dekker) Another way that people have been gauging the effectiveness of celebrities in adverting is by researching the involvement to asses the impact of the celebrity endorsements on high involvement and low involvement products. Popular products seem to have a higher viewing audience, therefore more recognized celebrities should be used to promote and advertise the their product. (Pughazhendi) When it comes to piking how many celebrities should be representing each product in advertisements, its important to keep the product and target audience in mind to be able to make the celebrity effective.

Research Gap Many articles I found focused on studies that researched how effective celebrities are in advertisements in the younger age group ranging from 18-35 years old. Older consumers have long been the invisible majority in advertising despite the rapid increase in an ageing population. A significant proportion of this population have high levels of disposable income, even in times of recession, but advertisers are not necessarily encouraging them to part with it. With that being said, a large portion of advertisements needs to be targeted towards them. This is important because the older population depend a lot on advertisements to inform tem of products and their benefits.

Conclusion After reading many articles on the effectiveness of celebrities in advertising I saw many different things. One, celebrities are said to be more effective when the celebrity is relevant to the product. Next, I observed that the celebrity need to be relatable to the consumer, in other words, the consumer needs to be able to recognize the celebrity for the celebrity to become effective in advertising that product. Also, when picking the amount of celebrities to advertise the product, the less the better. This is because celebrities all have different lives and to the consumer, this can get confusing when interpreting the celebrities credibility. All in all, celebrities can be effective in product advertising as long as you pick the right celebrities targeting the correct audience for each product.

Project Proposal To be able to inform the baby boomer population of products through celebrities, the celebrities have to be effective in captivating the values and needs of the baby boomer population. This can be done by having a study done at residences that are 55+ this way advertisers can have an accurate sample and accurate results to depicts this age population. After doing this study, then will the advertisers be able to tell which celebrities will be the most effective in portraying the older thriving population.

Daboll, Peter. "Celebrities in Advertising Are Almost Always a Big Waste of Money." Ad Age. N.p., 12 Jan. 2011. Web Dekker, Kim, and Eva A. Van Reijmersdal. "Disclosing Celebrity Endorsement in a Television Program to Mitigate Persuasion: How Disclosure Type and Celebrity Credibility Interact." Disclosing Celebrity Endorsement in a Television Program to Mitigate Persuasion: How Disclosure Type and Celebrity Credibility Interact 19.2 (2013): 224-40. EBSCO. Web Martin-Santana, Josefa. "Magazine Advertising: Factors Influencing the Effectiveness of Celebrity Advertising." Journal of Promotion Management 19.2 (2013): n. pag. The Online Platform for Taylor and Francis Group. Web Pughazhendi, A., Anthony K. Baskaran, R. M. Prakash, and N. R. Balamurugan. "A Study On Effectiveness Of Multiple And Single Celebrity Endorsement On Considerable Product Advertisements In Chennai Perceptive, India." Far East Journal of Psychology & Business 6.3 (2012): 11-18. Academic Search Premier. Web Shuart, Joshua. "Heroes in sport: assessing celebrity endorser effectiveness." International Journal of Sports Marketing & Sponsorship 8.2 (2007): 126140. EBSCO. Web