Ad Age has an interesting post today that details a recent study of the effectiveness of celebrity endorsements in advertising. The study found that celebrities really aren’t worth the money – less than 12% of celebrity TV ads had a significant impact on the brand they were promoting and a whopping 20% of celebrity TV ads actually had a negative impact on advertising effectiveness. Here’s an excerpt:
Why was this? Were celebrities losing their pizazz in influencing consumers? Had the age of social media and consumer control ushered in a new consumer that is not as easily won over by a famous face?
In fact, yes. Today’s consumer is a totally different animal than the consumer of even five years ago, meaning that what was effective and influential five years ago is not necessarily so today, as today’s consumer is more likely to be influenced by someone in their social network than a weak celebrity connection. Today’s consumer is informed, time-compressed, and difficult to impress, and they are only influenced by ads that are relevant and provide information. They don’t want to have products pushed at them, even from a celebrity. In fact, the data show that relevance and information attributes were key missing ingredients from most celebrity ads.
