Celebrity Endorsement Deals Almost Always A Bad Deal For Brands
from the people-don't-care-about-celebrities dept
A new research report claims that celebrity endorsements in the form of TV commercials are almost always a bad deal for the brand. The study covered every nationally televised ad in the first 11 months of 2010 -- and saw that ones with celebrities underperformed other types of ads, often drastically. On average, celebrity ads had a negative "lift," while non-celebrity ads did much better. Of course, you can hide a lot of details in aggregate numbers, and part of it might just be that the celebrity ads were done poorly. It's possible that a good celebrity ad can still be effective, but what seems clear is that "just add a celebrity" does not help at all. The study's authors posit that consumers don't care as much about celebrity endorsements in these social networking days:Today's consumer is a totally different animal than the consumer of even five years ago, meaning that what was effective and influential five years ago is not necessarily so today, as today's consumer is more likely to be influenced by someone in their social network than a weak celebrity connection. Today's consumer is informed, time-compressed, and difficult to impress, and they are only influenced by ads that are relevant and provide information. They don't want to have products pushed at them, even from a celebrity. In fact, the data show that relevance and information attributes were key missing ingredients from most celebrity ads.I'm not sure I completely buy that. After all, celebrities are some of the most popular people to follow or friend on social networks. I think it may be more a case of poor utilization of celebrities, where the endorsements are seen (reasonably and accurately) as being fake, rather than sincere. I think when a celebrity really does like a product and then also agrees to do an endorsement, those can be effective. But a pure "let's put this celebrity with this product" sort of thing is quickly dismissed as inauthentic.
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Filed Under: advertisements, celebrities, commercials
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I don't believe in celebrities endorsing anything, not even when they appear truthful.
I don't like them to be honest, they all appear to be self-centered and trying to grab attention anyway they can and that turns me off. Specially musicians in today's world.
Now one thing I did pay attention and I think still works is secondary placement inside a story or interview, people look at how celebrities are dressed and people try to emulate them.
Wow a lot of "I"'s there.
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which celebs? which ads?
I mean does this include chuck norris doing the home gym late night ad?
Other semi-celebs or has-been really aren't going to help that much.
Also what are they basing "success" on? cost of making the ad vs. results? how many people said they purchased the product because the ad featured a celeb?
seems to me it would be pretty tough to nail this stuff down properly.
I do say I have to agree with the conclusion that celeb endorsement means less now than it did previously but there is a whole lot more celeb worship in the media now a days than there was previously. Seems every new channel devotes time to what brad and angelina are up to when previously it was mostly just the checkout counter gossip rags. Guess that did start to change in the 90s with hard copy and Entertainment tonight and the like but they were fringe and not being covered on CNN/Fox/MSNBC in the regular rotation.
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I have to agree
Dr Dre's Dr. Pepper
I don't have a lot, but it seems that there is evidence of things coming together that truly make no sense.
I mean seriously, Kardashian is a socialite! Why should you be having ANYTHING to do with her and finances? And while Dr. Dre is good with music, what is the point with Dr. Pepper?
Not that there aren't a few that make sense such as Tiger Woods before his breakdown. It's just that it does seem accurate that ads with a pinch of celebrity status are going down the wrong direction.
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Re: I have to agree
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relevance is key
One time where a celebrity endorsement worked for me was an interview with Trent Reznor, where he listed some of the programs and filters he used to get certain guitar sounds. I dabble with guitar, and I really liked those sounds, so I purchased a copy of that VST.
If he were pushing one brand of cola over another, I wouldn't have cared, since I don't think of him as a cola expert, so his opinion there means nothing to me. But when a celebrity is explaining how they did something, what tools they used, that is a meaningful endorsement.
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Oprah
If she even hints she likes a product it sells
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I mean, we put up a sign telling people they could bring it back in for a full refund, per the publisher, but no one did.
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It's all about money
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Over saturation
Today we are over saturated with ads. We have ads on TV, on radio, on the internet. We have ads on our smart phones and even ads on the ATM machines. I find myself intentionally avoiding products that are heavily advertised.
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Re: Over saturation
I sorta do that too. There were surveys that said that most people (and doctors) claim that they are unaffected by ads but that statistics show that more ads mean more people buy the product. IOW, people are unconsciously affected by ads. So, to counter this affect I either mute the T.V. / radio during an ad (and often step/look away) or consciously avoid heavily advertised products to some degree. I don't watch that much T.V. anyways, every once in a while I do, mostly if other people are watching something and I'm watching with them.
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Re: Over saturation
"Today we are over saturated with ads. We have ads on TV, on radio, on the internet. We have ads on our smart phones and even ads on the ATM machines."
From the book No Logo (written in 2000)
"Even branding evangelist Tom Peters acknowledges that there is such a thing as too much brand, and impossible though it is to predict when we will reach that point, when we
pass it, it will be unmistakable. ... MTV founder Tom
Freston, the man who made marketing history by turning a television station into a brand, admitted in June 1998 that "you can beat a brand to death."
...
"Maybe there is a moment when the idea of branding reaches a saturation point and the backlash is directed not at a product that suddenly finds itself on the wrong side of a fad but at the multinationals behind the brands."
For a book written in 2000, this book makes a lot of very good predictions (ie: about the shifting information structure from one of a centralized structure to the more decentralized one we currently have). It was somewhat apparent in 2000 and was already happening but this book made good predictions about where it would continue to go.
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Lack of authority
But, assuming I'm forced to see and ad, nothing reduces its effectiveness more than a celebrity endorsement or aggravating presentation. Hollywood's denizens are fakers by design and intent. Sports players aren't the brightest pennies in the fountain, corporate lights have hidden agendas, and politicians are a combination of all the above. Getting George Clooney, Tiger Woods, Bill Gates or Nancy Pelosi to say something is a Good Thing only serves to take it off my list of choices should I need the type of product or service they're hawking.
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A thougth where it started
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoverGirl
Was the first thing to come to mind on this story. Your article is food for thought Mike but this maybe historically significant to it.
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Luke is a liar!
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I think it really depends
It was a tongue-in-cheek approach that i thought worked well. I believe that if more advertisements poked fun at themselves, it would go a long way for their image
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What's a celebrity again?
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Reverse mortgage, celebrity endorsement
What's of more interest is the the net results of how much the homeowner actually receives over the term of the RM, the amount paid on average to the celebrity spokesperson and the amount the mortgage company receives at closing, ie government subsidy.
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Hopefully they get a reverse mortgage explained to them.
So using celebrity endorsements must work. Also, we can not blame the companies from doing this, especially in this economy.
But we can only hope that when someone contacts them, they are helpful and provide quality information.
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in which tv channel
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