In today’s global society advertising and marketing communications play a very critical role for both businesses and their customers.World wide the first endorsements started with Wedgewood chinaware and pottery using the British Royal family,then came the Pears soap endorsements by a prominent British actress.With the advent of the coloured TV the advertising world saw a large group of TV personalities and members of the entertainment fraternity endorsing different brands and product categories.
Advertising media says that in 1975, one in 8 TV commercials had a celebrity.When Nike used Michael Jordan in their ad it saw large number of athlete centric endorsements and nearly 75% of sports related product advertising .Celebrity endorsements saw in 1988 a spend of USD 800 million.By 1999 a celebrity was featured in on out of 5 TV advertisements.A 1987 Advertising Age report shows that celebrity based advertisements are 20% of all TV ads and 10% of all dollar spends.
When new brands enter the market or a new country then they prefer breaking the brand recall scores by using celebrities.The choice of celebrities depend on the values and lifestyles of the brand and the celebrity being in sync with each other.But if the market sees a large number of brands in that category and an equal number of celebrity choices then the market sees a commoditization and subsequent move away from celebrities,Another thing happens the cost of acquiring a celebrity also starts inching up and pushing the marketing budget with stagnant or lower ROI.
Why do we need Celebrity based endorsements?
A marketing organization has four major objectives in pushing for using celebrities in their marketing campaigns.First to establish the product/brand need,create brand awareness quickly through recognition,three, set customer expectations and finally complete the brand buying cycle.
We see different products and brands partnering different celebrities to achieve these marketing and business objectives in their campaigns.Amitabh Bachhan in Gujarat Tourism to push tourism to Kutch and then the GOI’s Swachh Bharat campaign.You have Hema Malini and Madhuri Dixit pushing water purifiers.We see Deepika Padukone plugging Asian Paints new paint technologies.
In the world of marketing celebrity branding are put in 5 different categories.
| 1 | Testimonial | The celebrity acts a spokesperson for the brand |
| 2 | Imported | A celebrity performs a role known to the audience |
| 3 | Invented | The celebrity performs new original one |
| 4 | Observer | The celebrity assumes the role of an observer commenting on the brand |
| 5 | Harnessed | The celebrity’s image is integrated with the advertisement’s storyline. |
I shall end it here to pursue the role of celebrities in marketing and communications in our understanding of their impact.