Tuesday, 16 March 2010

• Do Celebrity Endorsers Influence Your Spending Habits?

  

  Tiger Woods’ announced recently that he is making a comeback. Wonder if that means so are his endorsement deals.

  Everyone will remember how Woods lost endorsement deal after endorsement deal as mistress after mistress stepped forward with lurid details of their affairs. Even companies who didn’t drop Tiger completely stopped using his image for a bit. Tag Heuer, for example, cut Tiger out of their US ad campaigns. (Interestingly enough, they continued to use him to sell timepieces in China.)

  All the Woods’ endorsement drama got me thinking: have I ever brought something simply because a celebrity has endorsed it? Or, would I ever stop buying something because I didn’t like a celebrity endorser?

  Instinctively, I want to say “no.” But subconsciously, I’m not sure it’s that simple.

  Anita Elberse of CNN.com suggests that celebrity endorsements work in more than one way. Of course, diehard fans will be easily persuaded to buy the product their favorite celebrity is selling. But, beyond that, non-fanatics will trust in the quality of the brand. If a great baseball player endorses a baseball bat, well, then, transitively, it must be a great baseball bat, right?

  At the very least, I will buy (tee hee) that a celebrity endorser increases a product’s visibility. You don’t have to like the person who is selling, say, a watch to notice that their selling it. Which is why, perhaps, negative press for a celebrity shouldn’t necessarily negate their endorsement contracts.

  What do you think? Have you ever bought a product because your favorite celebrity told you to? Do you think companies should drop their celebrity endorser in the wake of negative press and scandal?

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