In: Economics
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using celebrities in advertising campaigns?
In what ways might the use of celebrities in social media, such as Twitter or Facebook overcome some of the disadvantages you have listed above? What additional benefits might this form of celebrity endorsement bring?
Advantages are:
People are attached to their favorite celebrity and their fans usually trust them well. When they're buying your product, it tells their fans that it's a product worth using and creates trust in your name. Having a celebrity adding their name to a company often reassures customers that the product is of quality. The celebrity would be at risk of losing their image if they supported a product which lacked quality.
Representing a celebrity helps to separate the brand from the rivals. It can also boost ad recall, reminding customers of your ad and making your brand linked to their favorite celebrity.
Choosing the right celebrity will open up new markets for your brand. For example, they partnered with Michael Jordan when Nike decided to expand from solely sponsoring tennis and track – and this relationship has been so successful that it has grown into its own subsidiary.
Disadvantages are:
Once you sign into a celebrity to support your brand, you sign on to everything that comes with it. Although it typically involves getting in more of their fan base as clients, when a controversy happens it may lead to tragedy. Tiger Woods was a famous example of this in 2009, when allegations of his infidelity emerged and marketers started pulling him out as a partner to prevent customer backlash. As a result, Nike didn't release him immediately as a sponsor, and lost customers.
If a celebrity is too big, its popularity will automatically overshadow your brand. If the ad is too focused on the celebrities, it can cut brand trust in consumers ' minds. This may also become a concern if a celebrity at the same time endorses several items, because people could see the celebrity and equate it with another brand.
Social media like Facebook and Twitter can help in the following ways:
There are several benefits of having celebrities of endorse the goods but the obvious ones are the large target market that can be achieved via social media. An example of twitter accounts with over 30 million followers in 2013, which belonged to celebrities like Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, is given by the more followers a celebrity has, the greater the social impactThe latter now has 91.9 million fans, and one can imagine the immense social impact that he has today, and the value that someone like him would bring to a business.
Celebrities build brand recognition in advertising, and they create it even faster than conventional forms of ads. Brand awareness tests the percentage of people who identify a particular brand. Small companies spend lots of money and marketing time to increase customer perception of the brand incrementally. Having a local celebrity will do a lot to raise the visibility and appreciation of what a small business provides to the customers.
Including a celebrity in an ad can also help breathe life into a struggling brand. A small soap manufacturer, for example, may think about dropping a brand or product, particularly if production and overhead costs leave little to no profit behind. Use a celebrity to allure the brand 's benefits, however, could help generate new customer awareness and excitement.