Celebrities Marketing

Celebrity Marketing

Assignment Objective

Describe how Celebrities can be used as a reference group for different types of consumers. When does it make sense for marketers to use celebrities in their marketing strategies? Use ads to demonstrate how celebrities have been effectively used.

Celebrity Endorser: What and Why?

Credibility is the basic source of the endorser and it is created by transfer of meaning to the audience. Some companies in the world want to create instant popularity for their product; for this purposes, celebrity is one of the short cut (Mc Cracken 1989, p. 313). Celebrity can be defined as “an individual who is known to the public (actor, sports figure, entertainer, etc.) for his or her achievements in areas other than that of the product class endorsed” (Kamins cited Friedman and Friedman 1979, p. 34). From this terminology, we can see that a celebrity does not have to be an actress or an actor, but they may come from various fields of activities, even in the year 2000 IBM did a celebrity benchmarking using the Q-Score for one of their products (Deep Blue computer) which released in 1997 (www.ibm.com). Acquiring high a Q-Score after three years of its hit when the computer fight with Garry Kasparov in a chess tournament, shows that a celebrity status is very important to create consumers’ recall or familiarity with a product. In IBM’s case, the Deep Blue popularity became leverage for IBM superiority among Information Technology industries.

Besides becoming a source of credibility, another reason the company uses the celebrity because it creates persuasiveness among the consumers (Mc Cracken 1989, p. 311). Furthermore, Mc Cracken defined this as a celebrity endorser process, which means that “any individual who enjoys public recognition on behalf of a consumer good by appearing with it in an advertisement” (p. 310). We can see that celebrity endorsement mostly gains success in the market. Since the celebrity becomes an important part of a marketing strategy, the companies are willing to spend millions of dollars for special contract with celebrities to endorse their product because the celebrity also creates millions of dollars of profit for the company (Tripp, et. al. 1994, p. 535). For example, in 1984, Nike was spent two point five million dollars and created a new line of shoe products based on Michael Jordan’s brand that generated $100 million revenue in its first year (Goldman and Papson 1998, p.47). Up to this moment, Jordan still becomes an endorser for Nike even though he is now an inactive athlete. The Jordan products became a phenomenon among NBA fans that made Jordan tight tie into a contract with Nike until year 2023 with current contract value of $20 millions a year (www.xroads.virginia.edu). Jordan’s success in life (without any negative news on him) also contributed to his celebrity status that attracts the marketers to use him as an endorser (ibid). The illustration above shows that an appeal of a celebrity is highly related to the product endorsed. The marketer should carefully choose their endorser to avoid potential problems in the future.

Celebrity Type of Appeal

Each human is created differently and responds to different images or appeals; therefore, the consumers are trying to look for significant value that is persuasive and valuable for them from an endorser, while they are looking to an advertisement (Mc Cracken 1989, p. 312). Furthermore, advertising also creates an association between the product and the endorser, which emphasizes the type of appeal meaning in choosing a celebrity (Goldman and Papson 1998, p. 48). In 2006, Shimp introduced TEARS model that summarized previous findings in the celebrity appeal to the consumers. TEARS stands for Trustworthiness, Expertise, Physical Attractiveness, Respect, and Similarity, which all of that are basically developed from credibility and attractiveness of a celebrity. The credibility of an endorser will create internalization to the consumer (p. 296). Moreover, internalization occurs if the consumers accepting an issue of advertising based on his or her experience (ibid). There are two parts of the TEARS model that play an important role in the internalization process; those are the Trustworthiness and Expertise. Both of them are derived from the credibility of a celebrity.

Besides of the credibility, attractiveness also shaped the TEARS model. According to Shimp, attractiveness is the process of identification, which formed through the rest components of the TEARS model, which are Physical Attractiveness, Respect, and Similarity. The process of identification itself can be defined as the process of consumers’ adaptation to attitudes, behaviors, interest, and preferences of the