Download Celebrity Endorser: The good, the bad, and the ugly Margaret Campbell

Celebrity Endorser: The good, the bad, and the ugly
June xx, 2012
Margaret Campbell
They endorse anything from cars to shoes to cosmetics. Celebrity endorsers are a
big-time marketing tool but are they worth it? A study by CU-Boulder’s Leed’s
School of Business cautions marketers about the downside of using celebrities to
promote their products. Margaret Campbell, co-author of the study, says negative
associations with celebrities can outweigh whatever positive associations they
might bring to the product brand they are endorsing.
CUT 1 (:53) “The goal of celebrity endorsers for marketers is to get consumers one:
to pay more attention, which is why they use a celebrity that they know. But two: to
transfer their concepts of the celebrity to the brand, but this doesn’t always occur.
(111) We see that sometimes, for whatever reason, even though the celebrity is paid
to endorse the brand, aspects of the environment or the situation limits the extent to
which the positives transfer.”
For example, Campbell says a negative association can simply happen just because
the consumer doesn’t think that the celebrity is a good match for a particular brand.
CUT 2 326 “The overall message to marketers is be careful. What you see is that the
way marketers choose celebrities is by looking at the positives. Looking at the
esteem that the celebrities are held in to by consumers. But they don’t tend to think
about, well, what’s the negative in terms of negative associations with the celebrity.
(355) (602) So if you have a reality star who is very sexy but she’s also thought of as
a little unintelligent or ditsy, you need to be very careful with that as a marketer.
(616)
Furthermore Campbell says negative perceptions are more easily transferred to
product brand then positive associations.
CUT 3 33 “I think the most significant part of these findings is that the negatives
actually transferred more easily and more consistently than the positives did. (46)
(158) This whole power of the negative is really an interesting phenomenon. (218)
It is so consistent that it’s actually called the negativity bias and we see this again
and again. “
Campbell is an associate professor of marketing. Her co-author of the study is Caleb
Warren, an assistant professor at Universita’ Commerciale Luigi Bocconi in Milan,
Italy.
-CU-