As we have seen in the last blog how the advertising world has changed radically, yet there’s one of the oldest factors in advertising, Celebrity Endorsement is still prevailing to be the effective one. When you bring in a famous celebrity to endorse/promote your product/service, there are high chances that it will make a huge impact on the market & consumers too. A popular face does more than just promoting your product/service. A celebrity endorsement is a psychological tool that brands can leverage to earn consumers’ attention as well as aspiration. A celebrity is a public figure, he or she is an idol for many, and some of them have a massive fan following. In short, people highly trust what celebrities say on a public forum, what he/she shares on social media, what he/she does in his/her professional life, what kind of product or service he/she promotes, and how he/she promotes it. And this very psychology catches the eyeballs of consumers and leads them to buy a product or service.
This unique advantage came to existence in Indian advertising back in the year of 1941 when one of the fine actresses of the time Leela Chitnis endorsed the soap brand, Lux. The ad was quite simple yet attention-grabbing as the communication revolved around the beauty secrete of Leela Chitnis. But the real game of celebrity endorsement grabbed its pace in the late 80’s when the popular movie stars like Tabassum (Prestige Pressure Cooker), Jalal Agha (Pan Parag) and Kapil Dev (Palmolive Shaving Cream) started endorsing brands. Since then, it became a quintessential part of Indian advertising. According to the statistics, the market of celebrity endorsers’ in India has consistently catapulted from 665 celebrity engagements in 2007 to a total of 1660 in 2017.
This goes to say that how a celebrity endorsement has influenced the buying choices of masses.Today it’s a no brainer that digital is the new buzzword in communication. And in today’s market, there is acumulative challenge for all the brands to capture people’s time and their attention. And as per the statistic report, today’s marketers believe that a well-known brand ambassador enriches your brand to achieve a higher degree of consumer recall value to make your brand the most sought-after amongst the consumers. In these digital times, the celebrities like Ranveer Singh, Alia Bhatt, Shah Rukh Khan, Virat Kohli, Shraddha Kapoor, Amitabh Bachchan and so on are predominantly endorsing many renowned brands. Due to their popularity, brands associated with them are engaging with consumers effectively. Ultimately, these celebrities become the brand voice that constantly echoes in consumers’ears.
In the contemporary advertising, celebrity endorsement has become an integral part of marketing strategy as advertising agencies have transcended the orthodox advertising mediums. Today, an advertising agency does more than just creating a newspaper ad or a hoarding. Media planning has gone through a big change. And the celebrity endorsement too joined hands with this progressive alteration. So, if an advertising agency hires a celebrity, it can leverage his/her mileage in every aspect of marketing strategies and mediums. You can come up with uncountable no of ideas, campaigns, ads and publish them through popular platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc. You can leverage their influence over masses and create a word-of-mouth awareness through viral ads, video, tweets and so on. This is where a celebrity becomes your brand face and enables your brand to fetch significant business.
So, the answer to the question that how effective is celebrity endorsement, it is highly effective when we look at the current market scenario and trends. It doesn’t only bring charm to a brand, but it elevates the brand in the landscape of today’s highly competitive market.
