The Marketing Innovation Blog

In a world where consumers consistently stay glued to every celebrity’s move via TMZ, Access Hollywood, Extra, Entertainment TV, etc., a new poll suggest that advertisements featuring celebrities are unable to sway consumer’s purchase decisions. According to a report by AdweekMedia who asked LinkedIn respondents whether or not the presence of a celebrity had an impact on their purchasing decision, an overwhelming 78 percent said it did not affect them one way or the other. Well I am here to say that I don’t believe this study one single bit.

Now, I am not trying to state that every single celebrity endorsement is effective either. In fact, there have been a lot of terrible advertisements that feature celebrities that don’t make any sense; far too many to name. Still I can’t side with this study. In my opinion, American consumers are fascinated with fame, fortune, glamour and everything else that comes with being a celebrity. Plus, celebrity endorsements have been occurring in this great country of ours for over 50 years leading me to believe that a number of celebrity endorsements have worked.

One of the greatest examples of celebrity endorsement perfection is Nike and Michael Jordan. Nike created a shoe for Jordan in 1985 effectively known as the Air Jordan. The product sold like crazy and as Jordan’s popularity grew so did sales of his shoe helping to create the company we know today. Could you imagine if Jordan signed with Reebok? Air Jordan’s would not still be sold today! Throughout history there have been a lot of successful professional athlete endorsements, however, the product is not always athletically focused. Take George Forman for example. George Forman, a former boxing great, is now as well known for his past athletic achievements as his ability to sell grills. This celebrity endorser has sold over 100 million units of his George Forman Grill. Today, this lean-mean-grilling machine can be found all across America from college dorm rooms to multi-million dollar Manhattan apartments.

When EA Sports wanted to launch a football video game in 1989 that featured only 7 players per side, John Madden refused to put his name on it. The Pro Football Hall of Fame member insisted on having 11 players per team, per side in order to promote it. The company reworked their development process and Madden put his iconic brand name and voice on the product. Today, the videogame effectively known as “Madden” is the most successful sports videogame of all time and there is even a TV show dedicated to people playing it.

According to a Forbes magazine report back in June of this year, the 1991 Pepsi commercial which features Cindy Crawford stepping out of red Lamborghini was rated the sexist commercial of all time. A commercial created 18 years ago is still recognized as the sexiest commercial ever is pretty unbelievable. For a number of years Pepsi used Crawford as a spokeswoman because of her undeniable appeal and ability to create commercials consumers would remember.

Next up, is the pop princess Britney Spears. She has promoted a large number of products that feature her name including DVDs, videogames, dolls, clothing and perfumes. When Britney Spears endorsed the Elizabeth Arden fragrance “Curious” in 2004 the perfume earned $100 million in sales in the first five weeks of its release. Due to the success of the first perfume, Elizabeth Arden released “Fantasy” in September 2005 and again it showed tremendous success. Over the past four years Elizabeth Arden has released another four bottles of perfumes all endorsed by Britney Spears. As of August 2009, it was reported that Spears and Elizabeth Arden have sold over one billion bottle of perfume worldwide.

I could keep listing examples of celebrity endorsement gold to prove my point that I don’t believe this study. I am sure someone could list a number of celebrity flops too, so I will stop here and ask, why would companies continue to give celebrities millions of dollars if it did not help them sell products? This has been going on for years and will continue to go on because celebrities have influence over consumers whether you like to admit or not. In my opinion, consumers of today are too busy stating their independence to admit they follow the pack. Consumers love to try to stay below the radar, to be interested in special non-traditional, non-conformist products but advertisers know better. They know a properly picked celebrity endorsement can mean millions of consumer’s dollars landing in their pockets.

Tags: Advertising, Britney Spears, Celebrities ads, Cindy Crawford, Endorsement, Michael Jordan

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 at 1:34 pm and is filed under Trendspotting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.