Questions Remaining
The main tenants of celebrity endorsement are the following: attractiveness of the celebrity, credibility of the celebrity and meaning transfer between the celebrity and the brand. These tenants leave room for many questions to be posed as far as celebrity endorsement goes.
This principle states that an attractive endorser will have a positive impact on the endorsement. The endorser should be attractive to the target audience in certain aspects like physical appearance, intellectual capabilities, athletic competence, and lifestyle. It has been proved that an endorser that appears attractive as defined above has a grater chance of enhancing the memory of the brand that he/she endorses. The attractiveness of the celebrity leaves the question of does the company have a responsibility to present a healthy, average appealing person to the public? Celebrities have long played a part in what the consumer models their personal life after. From the diets celebrities endorse, the clothing brands/style they wear, and even up to the type of pets they have. The question posed is should they be responsible for presenting someone who is healthy in all aspects. Presenting someone who is anorexic, promiscuous or having drug problems culturally says it’s okay to do these things and you can still be successful.
The credibility of the celebrity is everything when it comes down to endorsing a product. Credibility is defined here as the celebrities’ perceived expertise and trustworthiness. As celebrity endorsements act as an external cue that enable consumers to sift through the tremendous brand clutter in the market, the credibility factor of the celebrity greatly influences the acceptance with consumers. If the celebrity generates no interest, the product more than likely will have little success with the celebrity endorsement. For instance, a C-list celebrity endorsing a product that is already struggling is not likely to see any increase in sales revenue due to the lack of credibility that celebrity has. On the other hand, a crappy product, i.e. the Snuggie, could see a large increase in sales if they placed the right celebrity with the product. The only problem is, few celebrities are willing to risk their credibility endorsing a product such as the Snuggie. The question i pose for this is to what degree do we associate the celebrity with that product. If something negative is discovered around a product, hires cheap child labor, how long is that attached to the celebrity and vise versa. If a celebrity endorses a product in their prime and then does something stupid, dogfighting, murder, what are the ramifications for a company sticking by their endorse?
This principle states that the success of the brand-celebrity collaboration heavily depends on the compatibility between the brand and the celebrity in terms of identity, personality, positioning in the market vis-à-vis competitors, and lifestyle. When a brand signs on a celebrity, these are some of the compatibility factors that have to exist for the brand to leverage the maximum from that collaboration. My question is do we expect celebrities to actually use all the products they endorse? For instance, a high payed celebrity like Tiger Woods endorses Buick, but do we actually expect him to drive a car like that? If celebrities are seen not having brand loyalty, i.e. not wearing who endorses them, should it cause contractual feuds. Michael Jordan’s son cost his school their contract with Adidas for refusing to wear the Adidas provided by his school.
Further Research
Most of the research surrounding celebrity endorsement has been done on the level of success a celebrity has while endorsing a product, but surprisingly, little has been done in terms of the gender of the celebrity and gender of the target audience member might have on the consumer response to celebrity endorsement. Ohanian (1991) reported that there was no significant main effects of gender in her study of the impact of gender on consumers’ perceptions of a celebrity’s attractiveness, trustworthiness, or expertise, nor on the likelihood of purchasing a product that was endorsed by a celebrity. She however, didn’t match up celebrities based on their area of specialty. For example male athletes were not matched against female athletes or male musicians were not matched against female musicians. Gatorade has been one of the few companies that has encompassed male and female celebrities on an equal platform, and has had success in the marketing of their new Gatorade “G’. Their commercial features NBA stars Dwayne Wade, Michael Jordan and Kevin Garnett, but also includes female athletes like Mia Hamm, Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh. By including a broad range of popular male and female athletes, Gatorade has been successful in associating their product with men and women.
Another study that could be done to further the research on celebrity endorsement is the gender differences in response to persuasive messages. Women would probably be more apt to be persuaded by female athletes and men by male athletes. This link would explain the tenant of trustworthiness of the endorser and would also help in determining whether some products can successfully be marketed by a commercial celebrity or require a niche celebrity. Women are more apt to accept product endorsement if it included female endorsers who appeared to use the product and gain results while men were more likely to accept the product endorsement based solely on who was endorsing the product and the celebrities abilities.
Research could also be conducted on whether the celebrity endorsing a product is worth what the companies are willing to pay the celebrity. For instance, the likeliness that Tiger Woods actually drives a Buick is more than likely false. He is less than half the target age for their product, and is worth much more than the average Buick driver. The association of Tiger Woods driving a Buick is about as believable as OJ Simpson advertising a set of kitchen knives. On a political economy note, the bank-ability of a celebrity should be taken into consideration in terms of whether their bank-ability is transferable to the product they are endorsing.