Celebrity Branding

Celebrity branding is a method of advertising which uses the services of a celebrity to promote a product or service with the help of their fame and status in the society. This method has several approaches; it can involve a celebrity simply appearing in a commercial and the celebrity can be signed for attending events for promotion. Another method is to start a product line using their name as a brand. Perfume and garments are the largest product lines involving such a promotion. All the top actors, singers, and models are known to give their names to a certain brand or licensed products. Jennifer Lopez started her own line of clothing a while ago which features designer clothes personally designed by her.

Famous people hugely influence the customer’s buying. Marketing experts, using associative learning principles, analyze the lifestyle of the celebrities to properly assign them to the brand which depicts them perfectly. Their fashion sense, appeal, awareness, fame, and public image are reviewed thoroughly to assign them the right charity work or product. Repetition, blocking, CS pre-exposure, extinction, overshadowing, belongingness, and association set size are the principles on the basis of which analysis is done like the famous Miss World Aishwarya Rai of India who has gorgeous eyes was chosen to campaign for eye donation project. Some of the celebrities are known for their distinct voice. This concept led to the voice-over method in advertising. Their voices merely attract customers when used in a commercial.

Today, nearly twenty percent of the advertising industry utilizes celebrity endorsement. A celebrity is bound to endorse many products and brands over a course of time. Each time a different image of the celebrity is being projected to the public. The company should keep in mind the previous identity and play accordingly. Projecting a different person every time will sustain the interest of the customers, but at the same time, the two identities shouldn’t conflict with each other.  The captain of England soccer team David Beckham has endorsed many products. While advertising for Gillette, his taste for hairstyles was considered and he was given a bald look. When campaigning for Police his passion for fashion was portrayed all over and heavily jeweled David Beckham was depicted.

If a celebrity isn’t comfortable with being pictured differently each time he or she can create a graphic image or logo of their own which can be used each time they advertise for a particular product. The logo can reflect the personality of the respective celebrity, like the font can be stylish if the celebrity is fashion conscious like Jennifer Lopez who created a logo of JLO, which is used to advertise perfume and even clothing line of her own. Another advantage in this approach is that the brand can still be appealing to the crowds even after the celebrity has lost his or her looks as they won’t require visual recognition and aids in long-term negotiations. The celebrity logo itself carries the style and attitude. 

Millions of dollars are being invested by marketers to get the promotional support of superstars every year. Davie Brown Entertainment has an agency completely devoted to the purpose of choosing a celebrity for a product. They not only judge a celebrity’s caliber to affect brand affinity and consumer’s taste but also design the advertisements for the celebrities to feature in it.

Much of this type of celebrity branding you will see on TV but you will also hear it on Radio.

Influencer Celebrity Branding

In today’s world, we have the added bonus of having a totally new group of celebrities called, “influencers”. These are online people who have a large following and can move a massive amount of people in a short period of time.

While it is possible to have them market or advertise your products it is always good to test them out because their following may not be buyers.

Some of the big brands are finding this out the hard way. Just because someone has 5 million followers and hundreds of views every time, they post something does not mean that their followers are buyers. And now brands are doing better evaluations on influencers.

Conclusion

Using celebrities to endorse your product(s) may be a good idea but using influencers may not help you reach your goals.

Celebrities say the product is great to the world while influencers say the product is great to only their followers who may follow them because they are funny and for no other reason. Therefore, their word on how good a product is does not carry the same value unless you have a funny product that they can use and endorse.

To use influencers the right way you need to do an evaluation of the influencer as mentioned earlier.

What do you think? Have you ever used a celebrity or an influencer to help promote your product or brand? Did you have good results? Would you recommend celebrity branding or endorsements?

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