Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

Not sure what the question is. Are you looking for reactions to the thesis topic or suggestions of how you'd address the issue?

I know there's evidence that "celebrity endorsers [can] alter consumers’ perceptions and purchasing patterns on the endorsed brand." Examples in the US include George Foreman Grills, Victoria Principal for several products (going back to her days as a spokesperson for Playtex Deodorant Tampons), and many others. (I've personally worked on at least 8 or 9 products that used celebrity endorsers.)

Your problem will likely be that companies are not about to share their data about the cost/benefit of celebrity endorsers if the findings will become public knowledge. They consider this kind of information highly proprietary.

"Can celebrity endorsers alter consumers’ perceptions and purchasing patterns on the endorsed brand?"

My answer is "it depends" and "yes".

William Shatner for Priceline and 100s of other examples, just do some googling rsearch.

Steve

Read: https://www.google.com/search?q=celebrity+endorsement+effectiveness

There is no good way to address the question from a consumer standpoint. Consumers are not fully aware of the influence on their decision-making by a celebrity endorser, so you can't ask the question directly. And it's going to be difficult to find a consumer who purchased a product with a celebrity endorser who didn't know there was a celebrity endorser.

So the only way to address the topic is to get the sales results for a product that (a) did a split test in different areas (with/without celebrity endorser), or (b) has reliable pre/post sales results that demonstrate statistically significant differences when there was a celebrity presenter.

In the latter case, of course, that would only demonstrate the positive side of the hypothesis, not the negative side.

Perhaps a better topic would be the characteristics of specific celebrity presenters that make them effective.

I agree with mgoodman.

But you said that a better topic probably is: the characteristics of specific celebrity presenters that make them effective.

But what do you mean exactly ?

Do you mean to try to identify which specific characteristics make certain celebrities successful and which don't ?

For example: the way that a celebrity's professional/social life affects the endorsed brand and customers' purchasing patterns ?
Or maybe how the celebrity's persona matches what the brand/product wants to connect with ?

If that is the case, how will she be able to measure/identify such characteristics ?

That is an interesting question, I have in fact been asking myself recently. So after doing a bit of research I came to the conclusion that celebrity endorsers are DEFINITELY altering consumers’ perceptions and purchasing patterns on an endorsed brand.

A good exampe of this would be the effect of the Tiger Woods scandal on the brands he endorsed. In fact, two economists of the University of California have estimated that Tiger Woods has effectively destroyed 5 to 12 billion dollars in market value of his advertising partners. On top of that, many of the advertising partners decided to not use Tiger's likness in their ads any longer. All because suddenly the perception of him being an honarble family man changed.

If you would like to learn more about this, you could check out the article I wrote on my blog. There I explain in more detail the theory behind celebrity endorsements and how it relates to the case of Tiger Woods.