Question

what is 'vampire effect' in marketing?

Answer 1

The vampire effect, also known to some marketing experts as the “overshadowing effect(link is external)” occurs when the persona and sheer force of personality of the celebrity endorser overshadows the advertised brand. Rather than helping to sell the brand and enhancing its stature, the celebrity’s presence reduces the ad’s effectiveness and hurts the brand.

A recent paper(link is external) written by marketing scholars Carsten Erfgen, Sebastian Zenker and Henrik Sattler define the effect as “the decrease in brand recall in an advertisement for an advertising stimulus with a celebrity endorser compared with the brand recall prompted by the same advertising stimulus with an unknown but equally attractive endorser.”

Evans (1988) describes the Vampire Effect as: “they suck the life-blood of the product dry; the audience remembers the celebrity but not the product.” Though such a description is respectable and memorable and in a way it is a great way to name a psychological effect after vampires. However, it does not fully or quite explain what the vampire effect is. According to Martin Roll (2006) when celebrities are used to endorse brands, one obvious result could be the potential overshadowing of the brand by the celebrity. More importantly, it does not tell advertisers how to measure the effect or figure out how serious it is for their particular brand relative to others.

Companies should ensure that this effect does not happen by formulating advertising securities and other communications. It is important for firms to select the right celebrity because sometimes rather than helping to sell the brand and enhancing its importance, the celebrity’s appearance can reduce the effectiveness, thus damaging the brand.

On the other hand, when firms select celebrities to endorse a product, they should focus on the ones with the low-risk lifestyle. For instance, according to Knittel & Stango (2014) in the 2-3 weeks after Tiger Woods’ extra-marital affairs became public, the shareholders of Nike, Gatorade, and Electronic Arts (his endorsers) lost somewhere between $5 and $12 billion dollars.

To conclude, sometimes an unknown person can help the brand more than a celebrity. Companies can select different figures that fit into their brand instead of using celebrities. However, if they were to use a celebrity endorsement, they should go for those with low-risk lifestyles and insist on longer-term endorsement relationships so that the celebrity’s aura has time to rub off on the brand.