To use, or not use a celebrity: that is the question.

Advertising is a subject that most of us can connect with. Individually we are bombarded with thousands of advertisements a day. Yep. Oodles and oodles of them. But how much real value is actually created by companies that use us as recipients of their advertising campaignns? A legitimate question I think, albeit a very broad one.



One aspect of advertising that has always intrigued me is the use of celebrities in commerical media. As an avid sports fan, companies such as Nike, Addidas, Reebok, and Gatorade have used, and continue to use celebrities to endorse their products. My personal speculation is that in general these companies do a good job of utilizing their celebrity atheletes by limiting them to doing what they do best - training for, and playing the sport that they are most proficient at. There was a Nike commercial that came out a couple of years ago that showed celebrities from many different sports training, with no identification of the celebrities and no speaking roles for the celebrities with the exception of an short statement at the beginning of the commercial that captured one of the main themes of the commercial. Check the link below! Fascinating.











http://www.youtube.com/watch#v=eO1jbmIiYoE&feature=related




As I do have a "dream" career of one day working in the sports industry in some type of marketing role, writing a research paper for my customer insights class may be a very small step in the direction of one day realizing this goal. After all, the more I know about marketing, and one type of advertising avenue that sports companies pursue, the stronger my knowledge base will be. By the way, if you're wondering about the image to the left... that's a metaphor for me taking on the world to achieve my dream career. I haven't figure out yet whether I'm the soccer ball or the building.

Moving on from the example of the sports specific use of celebrities in advertising, I have seen other commercials use celebrities in alternative ways, like showing direct usage of the product by the celebrity and/or having the celebrity endorse the product. A memorable commercial for me that illustrated just this was Jessica Simpson (singer) using a Proactiv acne treatment solution and endorsing the product throughout the commercial. No, I do not find this commercial memorable because I am a female with an acne problem. Take a look at the video link - I'm sure you can do the math.

http://www.youtube.com/watch#v=wmYZQmX2Jz8&feature=related


So I think I'd like to broaden the scope of my research paper to examine how much real value do commercials that utitlize celebrites generate, and more importantly, whether should firms ultimately bother using celebrities. Some major questions I have are the following:

• What is the average economic return generated by a celebrity vs. non-celebrity commercial?
• How do firms make a decision on whether to use a celebrity or not in their advertising?
• How do firms determine which celebrity to use to endorse its product?
• What type of experience do these commercials create for the customer?
• What type of persona or audience do these commercials target?

I think the latter two questions are the primary questions I would like my paper to be able to address. By better understanding more about the economic justification for using celebrities in advertising as well understanding some of the factors for using celebrities that may not be immediately obvious from a financial analysis will hopefully help arrange the framework to really understand the complete customer experience that these commercials are creating.

There is an interesting article from the Journal of Marketing (Vol. 59, July 1995, pp. 56-62) entitled "The Economic Worth of Celebrity Endorsers: An Event Study Analysis" that attempts to address at least the question of whether celebrities do indeed help generate profitibility through product endorsements. The conclusion reached is that there is a positive correlation between celebrity endorsement contracts and stock price, which suggests that celebrity endorsements are in fact a worthwhile advertising vehicle.


I see this paper as dominantly a reasearch-based product, but I'd like to be able to use this information to draw my own conclusions on what this customer experience is, whether celebrities are creating the right types of experiences, and back to the original question, is their use justified within the existing context of these advertisements? I woud also like to make some recommendations on what the marketing companies could do to improve on or expand the scope of the experience.

Arivaderchi party people.