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Table of Contents
Exective Summary

Introduction
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Celebrity Endorsement 5
Process of celebrity Selection

Impact

Celebrity Endorsement a strategy 8

Pros and Cons of Celebrity Endorsement 10

Examples of different aspects of celebrity

Endorsement.11

Conclusion
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Executive Summary
Celebrity endorsement advertising has been gaining popularity in the Pakistani market. Most
Pakistani marketers hope to make their advertisements stand out and hence attract consumers'
attention by using celebrity spokespersons.
Celebrity endorsement is a popular marketing approach to making a product more noticeable,
attractive and compelling to consumers. Many people are willing to spend money on the
products and services their favorite celebrities endorse. This shows the pervasiveness of celebrity
appeal as a means of persuasive communication.
Although the use of celebrity endorsers involves substantial costs, it does not instantaneously
guarantee success in terms of marketing promotion. Hence, there is a need to study how celebrity
endorsements affect consumers' behavioral responses and the brand image . Consequently, it is
worthwhile examining how people respond to celebrity endorsement efforts by marketers.

Celebrity endorsement

Use of celebrities as part of marketing communications strategy is a fairly common practice for
major firms in supporting corporate or brand imagery. Firms invest significant monies in
juxtaposing brands and organizations with endorser qualities such as attractiveness, likeability,
and trustworthiness. They trust that these qualities operate in a transferable way, and, will
generate desirable campaign outcomes. But at times, celebrity qualities may be inappropriate,
irrelevant, and undesirable. Thus, a major question is: how can companies select and retain the
right celebrity among many competing alternatives, and simultaneously manage this resource,
while avoiding potential pitfalls? This report seeks to explore variables, which may be
considered in any celebrity selection process.

Introduction:
Every day consumers are exposed to thousands of ads and this insists the companies to create a
unique position and receive attention from consumers. For this purpose various advertising styles
are used by advertisers to influence consumer brand choice behavior and among these different
available choices one very popular choice is Celebrity Endorsements. Using celebrities can
help companies to create unique ads and create a positive effect on the attitude and sales
intention towards the brand.
Celebrity endorsement has been applied for many years. Already in 1979 one in every six
commercials used a celebrity and in 2001 that percentage grew to 25 percent (Erdogan et al,
2001). The strategy of celebrity endorsement has positive effects for both company and celebrity.
Using a celebrity, the companies can build positive feelings or sense of security and association,
regarding the brand, among its customers. Since their idol is recommending the product. The
assumption is being made that it is a qualitative product. Consumers would like to identify
themselves with the celebrity and they buy the product because they would like to be as the
celebrity. Advertisements with celebrities therefore create instant brand awareness and the
celebrity induces personality of a brand.
Unfortunately there can be some drawbacks as well. The celebritys image can change or the
celebrity could lose the status of a celebrity. Moreover a celebrity could be endorsing for
multiple brands which would have a negative effect on their credibility. Furthermore, it might
happen that celebrities receive negative publicity. Celebrity endorsement is of major importance
to companies and every company has an image. By making a celebrity spokesman for the
company they put a significant part of the companys image in the hands of a celebrity.
In this report we focus on the impact of celebrity endorsement on the Brand, as the Brand is the
most valuable asset for any firm.

Celebrity Endorsement:
Celebrity is an omnipresent feature of society blazing lasting impressions in the memories of
all who cross its path. (Kurzman et.al 2007).
A celebrity endorsement is a form of testimonial from someone which indicates that they like or
approve a product of particular brand. Commonly endorsements are solicited from people who
are socially prominent allowing companies to advertise their products.
Essentials of Celebrity Endorsements
There are several factors to consider before resorting to celebrity endorsement. There is no single
formula to win in the world of marketing. A company must analyze the prospect of endorsement
from 360 degree prior to product promotion.

Celebrity Product Match:

For choosing a celebrity endorsement there should be the matching between the product
and personality of the celebrity. Like Malala yusuf zai an international icon but it cannot
be used for the adventures brands like Mountain Dew. For Mountain Dew some athlete
could be better choice.

Celebrity and Target Audience Match:

Endorse the celebrity who has demographic characteristics similar to those of the target
audience are viewed.

Celebrity Popularity:
Celebrity popularity is very important factor for the positive effect on the brand. Widely
recognize celebrities are perceived to be more credible and produce greater influence on
evaluation of brand and its purchase intentions.

Celebrity Values:
Celebrity endorsing is all about the transfer of the value from the person to the product.
There are two concerns here. The first is how long this could last. Can the person
maintain his popularity? Another concern is his private life personal integrity. If he is
implicated in any kind of scandal it would ruin the brand.

Celebrity Physical Attractiveness:

The celebrity endorsements based on the attractiveness of the endorser most of the time
produces positive effect on consumers. In general attractive endorsers are more effective
promoters than unattractive endorsers. The target audience is more familiar to the
attractive celebrities and these celebrities are more likable.

Return on investment
The most important factor is that of return on investment. Companies need to perform a
cost benefit analysis prior to endorsement. The process of gauging the effectiveness of
endorsement on the overall brand is but difficult. The companies expect to bring, in the
long run, future sales, revenues and profit from the present investments on celebrity
endorsement. Celebrity endorsement is an expensive means of brand promotion and the
price burden almost always shifts on to the consumers; if not, then it narrows the
companys profit.

In the advertising we find either a celebrity endorsing multiple brands or multiple

celebrities being used to endorse a single brand. This creates a negative influence when a
celebrity is endorsed to more than four brands.

Process of Celebrity Selection:

Anyone who is famous may be the right celebrity. However, the appropriateness of the celebrity
largely depends on the product or service. Most advertisers insist that their celebrity
spokespeople have charisma and current popularity. That is why we see more movie and
television stars, athletes, real-life heroes, and musicians acting as brand ambassadors in the
market. The identification of celebrities with the right expertise enables organizations to select
those celebrities that they thought are marketably significant and whom they believe will make
meaningful contribution to the effectiveness of product advertisement. These celebrities have
unique qualities and due to their value, will have products developed that will match their
perceived value.

Measuring a Celebrity Endorsement:

It becomes very important to measure the effectiveness of a celebrity or determine the worth of
celebrity. Because it is very important to determine whether the particular celebrity be
worthwhile or not. For this purpose we have some techniques for measuring:

The Q SCORE Method: There is a way to measure the credibility, believability, popularity, and
likeability of a celebrity. It's called a Q Score, and you can purchase the Q Scores of the
candidates you're considering.
Consider both sides of the deal for a client who wanted to use a celebrity endorser and for a
celebrity who was looking for an endorsement opportunity. Once you have defined the kind of
endorser you need e.g. athlete, actor, male or female, young or old, etc.
The Q (quotient) rating reflects a celebrity's popularity among those who recognize the celebrity
(Solomon 1996). Marketing Evaluations Inc., a US based firm, calculates roughly 1500 well-known
figures' familiarity and likability among consumers every year. The firm sends questionnaires to a
demographically representative national panel of the US population. According to Shimp (1997)
individuals are asked to answer two simple questions in these surveys:
(1) Have you heard of this person? (2) If you have, do you rate him/her; poor, fair, good, very good or one
of your favorites?
A celebrity's Q rating is calculated by dividing the percentage of the total sample rating the celebrity as
'one of their favorites by the percentage of sample who know the celebrity (Shimp 1997). A celebrity
may not be widely recognized, but still could attain a high Q rating, as individuals who do recognize them
may also like her/him. Inversely, a celebrity may be widely recognized, but could have low Q rating since
respondents may not like them. Basically, the Q rating of a celebrity answers the question of popularity
among those familiar with him/her. For example, if the Spice Girls were known by 94 percent of people
surveyed and 47 percent mentioned them as one of their favorites, their Q rating, expressed without
decimal points, would be 50 ( 47 / 94 = 0.50).
Rossiter and Percy (1987) argue that knowing a celebrity's Q rating may not only be beneficial in cases
where particular audiences are targeted, but it may also enable companies to save on the cost of hiring a
big celebrity name who might not be popular among target audiences, such as Michael Jackson for the
60+ male target audience. Q ratings of celebrities could be an initial filtering layer in selecting celebrity
endorsers.

The FRED (Familiarity, Relevance, Esteem, Differentiation) method:

Marketers use the acronym FRED to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of potential marketing
campaigns. The same tools are used to evaluate celebrity spokesmen .
Familiarity: The more familiar a celebrity is to the widest possible segment of the population, the more
affective their ads will be. Relatively unknown celebrities are only used to market niche products and
speak to very specific demographics.
Relevance: Marketers strive to create the greatest fit between a product and its celebrity endorser. The
celebrity chosen must be seen in the eyes of the public as linked to the product they endorse. The greater
the link, the more customers will trust the message being delivered.
Esteem: The more esteem that a celebrity endorser has, the more that esteem will transfer over to the
product they are endorsing. Celebrity marketing is about associating a famous person's reputation with a
product. The better their reputation, the better the product appears.

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Differentiation: The advertising market is fierce and it can be difficult to differentiate similar products
from each other. Advertisers are always trying to find a message or an image that makes their product
seem unique when compared to competitors. Having an esoteric or unexpected celebrity spokesman can
be a great way to stand out from the crowd.

Impact:
The impact would be both short term and long term but here the focus would be more on the
long term implications of the brand. Measurement of this would be challenging and data would
be difficult to obtain. The parameters on which impact could be measured would be on a
comparative basis of the brand before and after the celebrity began endorsing the brand. Sales,
revenue, market share, brand recall, level of repurchase, brand loyalty, trust, image and
perception of the brand could be the parameters.
Selection of celebrities can be done while they are at their peak or when they are destined for
greatness in the near future which again is a risk that may go either way. What is important at
some level is the value that a celebrity adds to a particular brand. The advertiser tries his best to
make the celebrity and brand as best match as possible. The celebrity endorser is seen to score
quite well on dimensions such as trustworthiness, believability, persuasiveness, and likeability
when tested for reaction from people. This is important to a marketer as if he can get a celebrity
to make the masses follow, believe or listen to him, he has been successful. The basis for the
effectiveness of celebrity-endorsed advertising can be linked to this process of identification and
internalization of the desired behavior. Price of fame may be high for the celebrity endorsed
brands but they have both what the markets and the everyday common man want. Celebrities are
people who enjoy public recognition of a large group of people. Celebrities may convey a broad
range of meanings, involving demographic categories e.g., age, gender and status personality and
lifestyle types.

Celebrity Endorsement, a Strategy

There is a criticism on using a strategy of celebrity endorsement. Most experts stated that
celebrity endorsements can be an effective strategy for a Brand. But some of them do not
recommend this strategy as the say that to be really successful a brand needs to have a strong
identity of its own. It should ideally not take advantage on the identity of a celebrity and hope to
achieve success.
As signing up stars for endorsements is a time tested strategy and has been effectively used by
some of the top brands in the world including Nike and Pepsi. Marketers believe that star
endorsements have several benefits key among them being building credibility, trust and drawing
attention which can translate into higher brand sales.
The need for brands to use celebrities in advertising is most felt when
1. The concerned brand has very close substitutes available
2. There is a need to create a unique and clear differentiation for the brand.
3. The brand has to make an impact at its introductory stage

The target prospects are more likely to choose goods and services endorsed by celebrities than
those without such endorsements. Celebrities facilitate instant awareness and immediate
attention. In this era of sound bites, channel surfing, visual orientation and quick newspaper
scanning, there is great demand for people's time and focus.
At a rational level, everyone knows it is a paid endorsement, and there is no immediate,
conscious association. But at a subliminal level an association occurs - the attributes of one rubs
off onto the other
Celebrity endorsement can be best strategy for a brand when it endorse to a product in its
introductory stage of life cycle. Because at this stage most of the people are unaware of product.
At this time celebrity endorsement can help the product to enter in the growth stage quickly.
So how does one decide whether to put a celebrity in ads. Ideally this should be done by the
communication idea. And for the market professionals the celebrity endorsement is
recommended when it is justified. There are many cases where it needed the celebrity to break
out of a category clutter.
Establish the product need: Establishing a need for a product or a product category is the
necessary first step. This is more important in new to world category of products.
Create Brand Awareness: Once the need for a product is established, customers must be able to
associate the brand with the product category. For example iPod is strongly associated with
portable MP3 players, Nike with sports shoes. A classic example of this is Nikes use of Michael
Jordan advertising for Nike. This advertisement instantly created a strong association of Nike
with basketball shoes.
Set customer expectations: Brand value comes from the customers experience with the product.
If the product meets or beats his expectations, then a positive brand image is created, else a
negative brand image is created. Therefore it is essential to set the customer expectations
accordingly. This is most common in established consumer products Beauty products, household
cleaning products and food products.
Create a purchase intention: These are marketing promotion advertisements Buy one get one
free or get additional discounts if you buy within a particular date etc. Use of celebrity
endorsements to create a purchase intention has been very limited. This is mainly because such
advertisements adversely affect the personality brand value of the celebrity. Being associated
with a discount deal is not favorable image for the celebrity and the customer.

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Pros and cons of celebrity endorsement:

Although the potential benefits of utilising celebrity endorsers are significant so
are the costs and risks.
Pros:

Increasing competition for consumer consciousness and new products explosion have
encouraged marketers to use attention-creating media stars to assist product marketing.
Usage of celebrity endorsement strategy may ease this threat by helping create and
maintain consumer attention to advertisements.
You are paying for the name of the celebrity that will be endorsing your product. If you
are hiring a very famous celebrity on launching your product in the market, even if it is a
new product, the news about it will spread faster that you can project it to be. The reasons
why business owners use celebrity to endorse their product is that it saves them time on
waiting when it can be known in the market. Once this happens, business owners can
focus on how to maintain the popularity of the product created by the celebrity.
If a company image has been tainted, hiring a popular celebrity is one potential solution.
At times a celebrity is chosen and a new product designed around the person since this
strategy can pay huge dividends by giving products instant personality and appeal.
Some of the initial positioning strategies for products fail to draw expected interest from
consumers. Companies can hire celebrities who have necessary meanings to establish
new positioning for existing products.
Increase market reach
It is a given that celebrities have this certain effect on the consumers market. People
idolizing them would want to use what they are using and even people dont know them
but sees them most of the time on their TV screens or billboards will give them a push to
give the product a try. Even if you have certain target markets for you product, there is a
possibility that you can reach bigger market because of this strategy.
Celebrity most of the time if not all the time will always protect their name in the
entertainment industry, thus this will also give your product the credibility you want to
build for it. Consumers would think, a celebrity will not endorse a product that is not
trusted so they trust the endorser resulting for them to trust the product as well.
Some of the most difficult aspects of global marketing to grasp are host countries' cultural
'roadblocks' such as time, space, language, relationships, power, risk, masculinity,
femininity and many others. Celebrity endorsements are a powerful device by which to
enter foreign markets. Celebrities with world-wide popularity can help companies break
through many such roadblocks. Pizza Hut International increased its global market share
by utilizing global celebrities.

Cons:
Despite the preceding potential benefits, there are still many potential hazards in utilizing
celebrities as part of an advertisement campaign.
Buyers can be skeptical
No matter how an endorser can be famous, you cant expect that the celebrity can please
everybody. Celebrity endorsement can also be a cause that consumer can be skeptical on
the quality of the product. business owners would have the challenge to keep up on
backing up a few other marketing strategy for the product.

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The fee for celebrity is expensive

This can be one of the downside for using a celebrity to market your product. You are
paying for their name but how much can you afford if they cant bring in the revenue and
outcome you expect from them to bring in for the business success?
It has been found that negative information about a celebrity endorser not only influences
consumers' perception of the celebrity, but also the endorsed product.
Embarrassment has occurred for some companies when their spokesperson or celebrity
has become embroiled in controversy.
Another danger of using a celebrity is that their endorsement of too many products can
dull their credibility. Consumers know celebrities are paid, which detracts from their
believability. If the celebrity endorses a number of products, consumer evaluation of that
persons credibility declines further. Some advertising research indicates that when a
celebrity endorses multiple products, it tends to reduce his or her credibility and
likeability as well as consumers attitudes towards the ad.

Examples of different aspects of Celebrity endorsement and their impact:

There are three aspects that influence a customer's attitude and, hence, the long term
impact on the brand - Attractiveness, Trustworthiness and Expertise. The matrix below
shows us the images and the celebrities: Attractiveness

Elegance
Beauty
Classy
Stylish

Trustworthiness

Honest
Reliable
Knowledge

Vaneeza
Meera
Ali Zafar/Sonia
Jahan
Iman Ali
Mahira
Anwar Maqsood
Tallat Hussain
Zia Muh-ud-Din

Indigo
Ufone Public
Demand
Telenor Talkshawk
Sunsilk
Panteen
Pampers
Liana
KASB Bank

experience
Wasim Akram
Accu Chck
Expertise
Take an example of another star Hadiqa Kayani, who endorses modish, trendy home appliances
from a Pakistani manufacturer PEL (Pak Elektron Ltd.) with the backing of a stylish star was a
great idea for the brand image. It was able to attract new customers who were style and trend
conscious but unable to afford high price international brands.

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Conclusion:
The battle for consumers attention is tougher than ever before, wherefore it has become hard for
brands to create awareness and to stand out. As a result companies are increasingly turning
towards non-traditional marketing tools in order to grab the attention of and establish a
meaningful relationship with its consumers. One such tool is celebrity endorsement, which today
is utilized in every sixth ad and thus represents a billion dollar industry. Celebrity endorsement
strategy can be an effective competitive weapon in mature and saturated markets in order to
differentiate products from competitors' since there is a heavy advertising clutter and almost no
room for actual product differentiation in markets, as long as the 'right' celebrity is found. Is the
'right' celebrity someone who is attractive, credible, dynamic, or sociable? Or, is it a combination
of all these characteristics? In light of the growing utilization and the large sums of money spent
on celebrity endorsement, answers are needed to help determine formulae which potentially
maximize effectiveness of celebrity endorsers. Even though scholars have tried to provide
criteria for advertisers on which to base their choices of celebrity endorsers, there is little
agreement on what dimension or dimensions are appropriate. There is furthermore a lack of
understanding as to how advertisers make celebrity endorser selection decisions.

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