THE NEED FOR CELEBRITY BRANDING ON A BUSINESS: PROS AND CONS
BY EKEOPARA DANIEL UGOCHUKWU
In today’s world the celebrities are being treated as a role model. People are changing their living style related with their favorite celebrity. This thing creates a great impact on the buying behavior of the persons. This attracts the customers and ultimately increases the company’s productivity.
Celebrities are not always creating any kind of effect on persons mind in terms of buying. But mostly it gives a great impact on perception of choosing any product. We are always thinking that if our favorite celebrity is using them. Then we should use that to be like them (Khatri 2006).
From last 150 years advertising is changing in different phases from the classical to modern. Now a day it’s the best strategy used by marketers to influence customers by showing celebrities with their products, it includes different appeals lie, exciting, absurdity, sexual etc. Belch, G. and Belch, M. (2008) acknowledged that the main aim of formulating such strategies is to get high brand revelation, longing, concentration and curiosity. To do so, marketers attach famous personalities with their products.
McCracken (1989) stated that these famous personalities had great influence on the consumer’s buying behavior that’s why it becomes the most attractive tool of advertising nowadays. The major aim to do advertising and adopt this strategy is to influence customers towards the products (Ohanian1990).
WHAT IS CELEBRITY BRANDING?
Celebrity branding, also known as celebrity branding or celebrity endorsement is a marketing strategy that uses a celebrity’s fame and image to promote a brand or product. Other use cases include not-for-profit organizations that leverage a celebrity’s fame to raise awareness or funding around a cause. Or event marketers leveraging a celebrity’s fame and popularity to create buzz and prestige around their virtual or hybrid event.
Your celebrity of choice doesn’t need to be a movie star, per se. Brands have produced excellent branding campaigns with music artists, sports personalities, social media influencers, or even fictitious characters like cartoons. The two basic requirements that will define your choice of celebrity are image (does the celebrity represent your values) and following (how large an audience will you reach via this celebrity). More on that in the next section.
WHY USE CELEBRITIES FOR ADVERTISING
Brands partner with celebrities for a number of reasons. According to Forbes contributor Steve Olenski, celebrity endorsement helps increase sales in the short term and brand awareness in the long term.
Celebrity marketing is also very effective to mark a major change for a brand, like the introduction of a new product, market expansion, or brand repositioning. Nike traditionally sponsored mainly tennis and track athletes. When they decided to expand their market, they partnered with NBA star Michael Jordan to create a new product line and release a series of ads that yielded tremendous success.
Celebrity branding can also be a powerful strategy to differentiate yourself from your competitors and get the edge in a highly competitive market.
For Kaltura, the David Duchovny campaign marked a big change in the way we tell our brand story. We shifted our main focus from lead generation campaigns and smart acquisition to include a 360-degree brand awareness campaign.
WHO IS A CELEBRITY
A Celebrity can be seen as a person who has attained a certain level of of fame and broad
public recognition of persons or groups as a result of the degree of attention given to them by mass media.
An individual may attain a celebrity status from having great wealth, their participation in sports or the entertainment industry, their position as a political figure, or even from their connection to another celebrity. ‘Celebrity’ usually implies a favorable public image.
By making a celebrity endorse a product or a brand, the company is putting an important part of its image into the hands of the celebrity. In this case, whenever a celebrity creates a negative image for himself, it also affects the brand he is endorsing.
It is believed that, when people of importance endorse a brand, it is because they have in-depth knowledge about the various brands. Marketers of today use celebrities to endorse both their brands and their products in advertisement to increase sales and possibly change the consumer’s perception regarding the brand and this goes a long way to have a positive influence on the purchasing intentions of the consumer.
WHAT ARE THE OPPORTUNITIES IN CELEBRITY BRANDING?
There are several opportunities in celebrity branding and can be discussed under subheads as follows;
1. Builds credibility
People are attached to their favorite celebrity, and they are generally well-trusted by their fans. If they use your product, it shows their fans that it is a product worth using and builds trust in your brand. Seeing a celebrity attach their name to a product also reassures consumers of the quality of your product. The celebrity would be at risk for damaging their reputation if they endorsed a product that’s quality was lacking.
2. Opens up new markets
Choosing the right celebrity can open up your brand to new markets. For example, when Nike wanted to expand from primarily sponsoring tennis and track, they partnered with Michael Jordan – and this partnership has been so successful it has expanded into its own subsidiary company.
3. Position a brand
Some small companies use celebrities in advertising to position their brands. Product positioning is placing a company’s products in the best possible light in the minds of a target group. For example, a small investment firm may use a well-respected and retired local disc jockey to market a retirement plan for people ages 50 and over. The fact that the disc jockey falls in the consumers’ age group and has a good reputation in the community makes the company’s product and message more believable.
4. Breathes life into a failing brand
The use of a celebrity in an advertisement may also help to breathe life into a failing brand. For example, a small soap manufacturer might think about dropping a brand or product, especially if production and overhead costs are leaving little or no profit. However, the use of a celebrity to tout the benefits of the brand could help create new interest and excitement in consumers.
WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES IN CELEBRITY BRANDING?
There are some challenges involved in celebrity branding that you should be aware of. Some can be avoided by choosing the right celebrity for your brand, others are force majeure and might require you to break the partnership:
a. Overshadowing
If the celebrity is too big for your brand or the storyline of your commercial puts the focus on the celebrity instead of the product, your campaign won’t be effective. Always remember that your brand is the star, and your celebrity is the spotlight.
b. Over exposure
Some celebrities are real endorsement junkies, connecting their names to a host of different brands simultaneously. This could hurt the credibility of both the brand and the celebrity in the eye of the consumer. It’s also important to verify that your celebrity promotes compatible brands. You don’t want any competitors among those brands, or brands that don’t align with your company values.
c. Brand reputation risk
We’re all guilty of sneaking a peek at the tabloids, from time to time. People love a good celebrity scandal. Brands don’t. Not when their name and reputation are linked to that celebrity. Sex, drugs, or bad behavior can negatively influence your brand image. Do a background check to see if your celebrity has been involved in any scandal or has a propensity for unacceptable behavior. A prominent example of this was Tiger Woods in 2009, when rumors of his infidelity surfaced and brands began to drop him as a sponsor to avoid the backlash from consumers. Nike didn’t immediately release him as a sponsor and lost customers as a result. Other kinds of changes in a celebrity’s image and life can impact your brand as well, such as decreased popularity or visibility.
d. Endorsements are expensive:
This may seem obvious, but getting a celebrity endorsement typically requires shelling out a pretty substantial chunk of money. Pepsi decided it was worth the price when they signed on with Beyonce for a whopping $50 million 10-year endorsement contract, but if you aren’t a multi-billion dollar company, it’s important to assess if the increase in consumer interest and revenue is worth the cost of the endorsement.
CONCLUSION
Evidently, businesses and products having a celebrity endorsement increase their marketability. Such products can introduce new clients and loyal customers hence the growth of their company. Celebrity endorsement is certainly one of the best strategies that companies should adopt when targeting the new clients. Celebrity endorsement can apply to both small businesses and large multinational companies (MNCs). However, the type of stars may differ. Multinational institutions have to use a well-known international celebrity, may it be a musician, artist, actor, news anchor or any other globally recognized celebrity who will
categorically increase their sales and improve the business. On the other hand, local companies can get a well-known local celebrity depending on the target market and audience, which will see it improve the sales of the company (Hung, 2014).
