Celebrity endorsement is one of the biggest misused marketing tool.
Here is the normal formula. Create a brand, sign up a larger than life celebrity to endorse your product and viola – people flock to shops to buy your brand.
Well not necessarily. And here are the reasons
1. Too many celebrities do too many endorsements. Can you honestly answer how many products Tendulker and Shahrukh khan endorse?
2. Celebrity and the Brand must be a close match. In recent years two of the most successful brand endorsements are – Amir Khan endorsing Coke and Abhishek Bacchan endorsing Motorola. Reason? Amir khan’s versatile acting created “fun” around the concept ”thanda” . And Abhisheks’ boyish charm created “self-deprecating humor”, a very rare thing among celebrities who usually guard their image like anything, around the brand Motorola.
Whats your take on this?
4 comments
Nash
April 12, 2007 at 9:36 am
Whilst I agree to the points mentioned, celebrity endorsement still works to certain degree, especially in this part of the world. People from the subcontinent tend to pay attention to those they know and adore. Hence endorsements do retain and increase viewership.
However, if primary objective is believability, that is quite missing from not only celebrity endorsements, but also any form of ads. At any point, any commercial is considered as a communication from the company. Endorsement in the form of BTL also fails to achieve any result in terms of believability.
Celebrity endorsement can, on the other hand, encourage people to use the products if the TA in question has a strong association with the celebrity.
Tanazzum
April 15, 2007 at 4:34 am
hey shammo 🙂 looks like you’ve been maintaining this blog for a while. NIce!
anyway, I absolutely agree … the whole idea of celebrity endorsement is that the particular star represents only your brand! It helps more if the product is wearable or something, that way the star goes around wearing only that brand.
Miller
April 15, 2007 at 8:49 am
When MLX galaxy an american soccer club offered David Bekham the former england skipper USD250million 5year contract I wondered what they are thinking. David Bekham is not a player with great quality like Cristiano Ronaldo or Ronaldinho but yet he is offered such a massive wages in the history of sports entertainment. Well the ultimate goal is to promote soccer in North America region they have choosen celebrity endorement like David Bekham.
Even americans who are not even fond of soccer they are also talking about the big sum. The young teenagers who don’t know David Bekham are saying ‘I don’t know him or like soccer, but I sure think he is cute, I will definitely go see him playing’. People from NBA or NHL or baseball are gone crazy with the sum. It seems like everyone knows about the big sum, soccer & David Bekham all on a sudden in North America region. It had been almost one week David Bekham was in CNN/BBC top news for such amount of wages. Just think how unfair David Bekhams weekly wages of around USD 1 million compare to his colleagues USD 50,000 a year. How will he be able to match with them? Surely no one going to like him.
How is branding done here to promote soccer?
Do you think it is a successful application of celebrity endorsement for branding? Do you think its overdoing? Can this be defined anything other than celebrity endorsement because David bekham is not known in North AMerica yet so much buzz…..
shahriar amin
April 15, 2007 at 11:45 am
This is one of the rare cases where Celebrity Endorsements worked because of the second reason i stated in the post before
“THE CELEBRITY AND THE PRODUCT MUST HAVE A CLOSE MATCH” They should complement each other well and serve a unique purpose.
It worked out for everyone and was a win win situation because
1. MLS needed something that is glamorous too attract new audience. Hence David Beckham
2. Beckham needed something that can help him capitalize his “other’ marketable skills – good looks, celebrity lifestyle and celebrity wife since his football career is going down
This is a case of solid strategy. Remeber other companies used Beckham as well – Motorola, Gillette etc. But none really gained any significant results out of it. But its only because of the strategic use of MLS who knew in US glamor will sell more than fantastic football skills, thats why they invested the money.
And my guess is it will pay off for MLS and its a gr8 strategic move for them.