Impact of Celebrity Endorsements on Brand Image

Abstract

Celebrity endorsement has been established as one of the most popular tools of advertising in recent time. It has become a trend and perceived as a winning formula for product marketing and brand building. It is easy to choose a celebrity but it is tough to establish a strong association between the product and the endorser. While the magnitude of the impact of celebrity endorsement remains under the purview of gray spectacles, this paper is an effort to analyze the impact of celebrity endorsements on brands. Objective of this article is to examine the relationship between celebrity endorsements and brands, and the impact of celebrity endorsement on consumer's buying behavior as well as how consumer makes brand preferences. This paper proposes a 20 point model which can be used as blue-print criteria and can be used by brand managers for selecting celebrities and capitalizing the celebrity resource through 360 degree brand communication which, according to this paper, is the foundation of the impact of celebrity endorsement. Celebrity endorsement is always a two-edged sword and it has a number of positives - if properly matched it can do wonders for the company, and if not it may produce a bad image of the company and its brand.

Keywords: Celebrity Endorsement, Celebrity Credibility, Controversy Risk, Brand Personality, Brand Image

JEL Classification: M37, M31