Celebrity endorsement is the most effective media tool!

Our group thinks that celebrity endorsement (testimonial) is the most effective media tool.

This technique of persuasion enables companies to reach out to the consumers using the celebrities that appear in the advertisements as the spokespersons. It is a common mentality among consumers that if an athletic or a Hollywood star uses the product, then it is certainly good [and all fears vanish with a pooft].

It is not cheap to sign on high profile celebrities to endorse a particular product, so it takes a company with a substantial amount of financial backing to be able to do so, which in fact increases the sense of security the consumers have about the product. The consumers will think that the product should be safe enough to use and the quality should be ensured since a celebrity has used it before.

One company with many artistes and athletes under its wing is Pepsi. In one advertisement (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6W8D4C74iY), David Beckham, Ronaldinho, Thierry Henry, Roberto Carlos and Van Der Vaart were playing beach soccer and drinking Pepsi, before some guy came and kicked the ball into the sea. The rest of the advertisement shows the soccer players doing sleek moves on the surf boards, apparently playing a modified version of soccer. Of course this has nothing to do with Pepsi, but given the rare chance of seeing some of the world’s most celebrated players coming together for the 60 sec of over-the-top soccer, the advertisement sure captures eyeballs. Celebrities from other fields and other regions in the world also help (or has helped) to promote the soft drink, from Jay Chou, F4, Jackie Chan of Asia to Michael Jackson, Tyra Banks, The All-American Rejects. They target different groups of consumers, but ultimately they help to boast Pepsi sales using their glittering star factor.

Another company that makes use of celebrity endorsement is adidas. Here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkm86AfI48I), soccer players are again used to place emphasis on their tagline: Impossible is Nothing. Sports equipment companies sometimes even request that the athletics don their products during competitions, so that it further convinces the consumers that the product is indeed effective. The celebrity image gets so firmly imbedded into the viewers’ minds that the advertisements would be called ‘the Britney Pepsi ad’ or ‘the Jeanette Aw SK Jewellery ad’ if the subject ever comes up during discussions.

Besides sports equipment and food products, skincare products, clothes, electronic products are also endorsed by celebrities sometimes. Even though rational consumers should know that the celebrities possessed the spotless, ageless, porcelain skin even before their endorsement, some are still convinced to fork out money for the product in order to ‘get the same skin as that female model’. As for clothes, which fan doesn’t want to get the same shirt/media player as his/her idol? [I fell into that trap, sadly.]

Another media tool that can be used here is the projection of the Singaporean boy-next-door image. This encompasses the use of slang such as the ‘la’s, ‘leh’s, as well as dialects to create a sense of familiarity and connection between the character(s) featured in the advertisement and the viewers. It can add humor too!

Bibligraphy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_spokespersons

Done by: Ming Mei, Joel, Jia Han, Seng Henk, YiXin