Celebrity Endorsement & Its Impact on Branding Strategies - Essay Sample

Introduction

Celebrity endorsement or branding is a type of marketing strategy or advertising campaign used by companies, brands, and non-profit organizations that involves a well-known person or celebrities (Thrall et al., 2008). The company uses their fame or social status to help promote a certain product or service and even to raise awareness on social or environmental matters. The marketing department uses celebrity endorsement, hoping that the significant pictures of the well-known person of the brand will be passed on to the goods or services as well as a brand image related to the celebrities (Yang, 2018). In essence, celebrity endorsement is commonly used by beauty or fashion brands. Also, community-based organizations rely on celebrities because they are considered to possess mass communication skills that can attract the attention of the people. Their skills to attract masses helps such organizations to reach a wider audience intended to raise public awareness towards a particular issue or a company therefore making celebrity endorsement more effective fundraisers. Celebrity endorsement is the process of forming a significant relationship between a product and a very influential person who fits with that particular brand and whose character resonates well with the intended customers. The celebrity can endorse a product in various ways, such as in social or print media and adverts. This paper aim to describe how the use of celebrity branding in advertising has evolved in the last 30 years. The scope of this paper is not qualitative representative of celebrity endorsement because its data may not be significantly enough to explain the complex issues around the world.

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History of Celebrity Endorsements in Advertising

Throughout the history of celebrity branding, royal endorsements were commonly used as a form of branding intended to promote products or services. In a sense, the first product to use celebrity endorsements dates back to 1760s, where Sons and Josiah Wedgwood, producers of chinaware and pottery used royal endorsements on well-known persons as a marketing strategy to promote their products and illustrate the value in the organization (Thrall et al., 2008). Later on, trade cards were developed and introduced to the market where these cards had a picture of a particular celebrity as well as an image of the product. These cards were given to consumers accompanied by the product that would show celebrities such as sports stars and actors.

In 1990s, firms and companies decided to begin making their products around such celebrities (Yang, 2018). An example is when Nike Company noticed a young and talented basketball player with the name Michael Jordan. Then, Michael Jordan became a celebrity and brand ambassador of the Nike Company for the sports industry. Nike relied very much on the social status of Michael Jordan to make their brand product well known in the international market (Yang, 2018). Since companies and firms started making their products associating them with celebrities and the fact that these celebrities are becoming brand ambassadors for the company, entertainment, and athletes celebrities began to negotiate about their payouts and salaries for representing the companies because of stiff competition from other firms.

Moreover, in 1900s, celebrity endorsements came to a different level. Instead of pictures of the celebrities promoting a particular brand, companies and firms began to hold different press conferences with their preferred celebrity to announce special deals. This means that these celebrities are now becoming a spokesperson for the company. As more firms and other organizations got their brand ambassadors to hold different press conferences announcing special deals with their celebrities, sales for their products were immensely increasing as well as more special deals were brought to the market. Also, celebrity endorsement and marketing strategies date back as far as the notion of celebrities (Thrall et al., 2008). For instance, in the 1900s, Ty Cobb had his tobacco brand while Mark Twain co-branded his pens. The attraction of a particular brand endorsed by a well-known person was very powerful since then, and that allure continues up to today. The significance of celebrity endorsement in a print or commercial advertisement has dramatically changed over time for both the influential person and brand product. In 1990s and 2000s, it ushered in a new era of mutually and joint beneficial marketing strategies, co-ownership, and product creation with celebrity endorsement at the forefront of branding decisions.

Endorsement celebrity has evolved rapidly over the years, and the impact of these images has had on the public domain has largely remained unchanged. Presently and historically as well, celebrities are considered as aspirational, influential, and, more importantly, they are marketable. The use of celebrities as brand ambassadors has remained a positive and powerful communication tool for marketers. The strategy is known to stimulate the engagement of consumers as well as to emanate a sense of relevancy and credibility in the face of the customers (Yang, 2018). In a sense, the idea of celebrity endorsement itself continuously morphs and evolves daily. The introduction of new television channels, the emergence of on-demand and specialized programming, the explosion of the culture of social conversation as well as the insatiable phenomena of consumption of content have given rise to an expanded meaning of celebrity.

The component of celebrity branding and endorsement has today become an omnipresent instrument in communication and advertising management. In 1998, research shows that the firms and companies spent an estimate of about eight hundred million dollars in the United States on getting celebrities for personal relations, advertisements, and promotions campaigns. Also, in 1999, 1-in-5 ads on televisions featured by a well-known person (Thrall et al., 2008). Because more celebrities were very much eager to lend their hands to endorsement deals, it contributed to an increase in the value and number of deals. This clearly shows the notion that well-known people have, for over many years, made excellent salespeople. Associating the company with a well-known face is the easiest and surest way for such companies to generate product relationships in the minds of the customers. Whilst heroic sports or a cherished actor figure endorses a brand; this produces instant advertisement credibility.

In the United States, celebrity endorsement has been a critical issue of marketing shown by the fact that twenty percent of endorsements in the country feature well-known persons. With the rise of adoption of social media as well as penetration of modern cable television as a marketing strategy, the decade that began in 2010 has witnessed key evolution in the United States endorsement space. According to the sources from the industry, the number of cases of celebrity endorsements over the past decade or so have seen an increased from about six hundred and fifty advertisements in 2007 to approximately one thousand six hundred and sixty advertisements in 2017 that represents a constant compounded growth rate of ten percent annually (Yang, 2018). For instance, currently, film stars dominate the industry, with approximately seventy-six percent of endorsement market share and then followed by twelve percent of sportspersons. Today, the celebrity endorsement industry is evolving from vanilla endorsement plain deals to fully-fledged relationships through equity deals, joint ventures, royalty arrangements, as well as strategic merchandising relationships and other innovative structures. These structures are in form of fixed-term or fixed fee engagement and one-time engagement.

Celebrity endorsements have been over the past decades critical to the advertising industry. For instance, traditional advertising campaigns gave an illusion in the sense that well-known persons used the brand they were endorsing. But by the late 1990s, with an increase in the power of celebrities, different products harnessed celebrity control through designing brands, particularly for well-known people. In essence, an example is the case of Nike's Air Jordan's that raised the profile of Nike Company internationally, and it is still being sold in the market up to today. However, credit information and crunch age led to the rise of a more sceptical customer. Since after 2008, how people shopped drastically changed as they looked for other alternatives to their preferred and favorite products as well as cheaper approaches to source these brands. The information and social media era dramatically changed the way through which people interacted with well-known persons, hence making them more accessible in such a way that never in existence before (Thrall et al., 2008). Therefore, it allowed various people to witness for them whether such well-known persons used the brands they endorsed. Celebrity endorsements are not fading away in recent years since well-known persons have been used much more than just a name or a face. For example, MAC's collaborations continue to be very famous as well as the collaboration of Victoria Beckham with Estee Lauder particularly witnessed limited make-up edition collection within a single day.

Success of Celebrity Endorsement as an Advertising Tool

Celebrity endorsement is a more successful tool of advertising because celebrities have very significant social networks where people are very interested in the products and trends that these celebrities endorse. This marketing tool is successful because it has more potential to reach a wider audience than the other oldest ways of advertising tools. Celebrity endorsement is a kind of promotional mechanism that boosts product awareness. Also, this tool is a way of gaining visibility and enhancing credibility for brands. Since celebrities are populous people in the society, celebrity endorsement is the surest way of making brands stand out (Yang, 2018). For a fact, many firms and companies have leveraged successful celebrity endorsements, which have resulted in increased business operations. In most cases, celebrity endorsements are related to large organizations. More importantly, lesser and smaller known firms are making significant efforts to reach out to well-known influencers needed to promote their products. Likewise, celebrity endorsements enhance credibility and can introduce a product to new industries.

Furthermore, celebrity endorsement is a successful advertising tool because it influences the consumer's purchasing power. In a sense, celebrity endorsement refers to the promotion of a service or product by a popular person. For instance, an athlete can endorse a particular product such as athletic footwear (Thrall et al., 2008). Additionally, Nike is popularly known throughout the world for endorsements of brands such as athletic footwear. In many cases, Nike has had numerous successful endorsements campaigns like in golf or basketball, which has seen significant benefits from celebrity endorsements from professional athletes like Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan.

Moreover, celebrity endorsements are very powerful and successful due to largely celebrity networks. This is because well-known persons can reach out to a large group of people through various mediums such as social media, traditional media, and television. The other significant reason they are more successful and powerful is due to celebrity impact. Nonetheless, celebrity branding and endorsements are more successful because they rapidly increase sales of a company (Yang, 2018). Taking celebrity endorsement can increase the value of stocks...