Evolution Of Celebrity Endorsements

CELEBRITY ENDORSEMENT

Definition

It is a form of brand or advertising campaign that involves a well known person using their fame to help promote a product or service. Manufacturers of perfumes and clothing are the some of the most common business users of classic celebrity endorsement techniques, and launch event appearances, in the marketing of their brands.

History of celebrity branding

Through the 1760s, royal endorsements were used as a type of celebrity branding to promote a products. The first product that used celebrity endorsements was in 1760’s, where a company called “Wedgwood” who produced pottery and chinaware ,it used as a endorcement in promoting a project.

In 1875-1900’s trade cards were introduced, this is where there would

An example of this is in 1984 when the company ‘Nike’ noticed a talented and young basketball player called Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan, then became ‘Nike’s’ celebrity brand ambassador for their sports industry. Nike extremely relied on Michael Jordan’s social status to make the brand internationally well known.

Since companies started making products around celebrities and the celebrity becoming the brand ambassador for the company, athletes and entertainment celebrity’s then started to negotiate salaries and pay out ’s for them representing the company due to competition of other firms. Due to salaries always increasing because of the demands of the celebrity, usually sales for the company that the celebrity was promoting would increase.

Furthermore, in the late 1900s, celebrity endorsements came to another level, instead of images of them promoting a brand, companies started to hold press conferences with the celebrity announcing special deals, this meant celebrities had now become a spokesperson for the firm. As more companies got their celebrity ambassador to hold press conferences and announce special deals, sales for the brands were increasing immensely and more deals were introduced to the

Reach can be loosely defined as the number of people that have seen and/or heard the brand’s intended message at least once (Belch & Belch, 2012). If a brand or company decides to use celebrity branding to market their product, it is highly probable that they are deciding to attempt to reach the largest assortment of potential consumers possible, rather than reaching a small number of consumers but more frequently – which is described as frequency (Belch & Belch, 2012).

Brand image

There is a high focus placed upon the importance of choosing a reliable, trustworthy celebrity to endorse or sponsor a company’s product, while still balancing the celebrity’s attractiveness, power, and similarity of the celebrity’s public image with the company’s overall current , or intended brand image.

Brand image can be described as “the set of beliefs held about a particular brand” ( Kotler,1988). Research carried out by Keller & Aaker in 1992 suggests that a brand with better positive brand image and attitudes is more likely to achieve heightened development within their