Social Influencers vs Celebrities: Why Celebrity Endorsement has Become History
Celebrity endorsement, also known as celebrity branding, is centuries old. Today, some companies are still using it to promote products and services. For instance, Jennifer Aniston promotes Smartwater, Emma Stone does that for Revlon cosmetics and Daniel Craig is doing it as 007 for Heineken.
But the modern age has something new to offer to companies — social media platforms. They offer access to hundreds of millions of people, and in the world of social media there is a special type of celebrity to help companies with advertising — the social media influencer.
A Brief Overview of Celebrity Endorsement
For the longest time celebrity endorsement was the preferred method many marketers used to help companies get the word out about their products and services. Why? Because the only way to reach a large amount of people in the past was to advertise on TV, radio and billboards. And is there a better way to tell a story than using a famous face and voice.
But as you will see, marketing, powered by celebrity endorsement has a completely different impact than that powered by social influencers. The first thing companies want to achieve with celebrity endorsement is to instantly build brand equity by leveraging the celebrity-audience connection. Do you remember Michael Jordan? Well, after Nike partnered up with him, the results were so good that a new multibillion dollar company was formed — Air Jordan.
When celebrities appear in ads, they also automatically make them more memorable, and that is every company’s dream. Celebrity endorsement campaigns also help the audience believe that the advertised service or product contributed in some way to the celebrity’s status. You can see this intention anywhere you look — great-looking Hollywood superstars advertising supplements, professional drivers (NASCAR and Formula 1) promoting motor oil, and so on. But there is another side to this coin.
Let’s Look at the Disadvantages of Celebrity Endorsement
- Celebrities might endorse several products and services at the same time. Unless you are sitting on a big pile of money you won’t be able to sign an exclusive deal with a celebrity. This can easily put the brands in the background, as people will remember seeing a celebrity on TV, but not the exact brand they were advertising.
- People become suspicious when they see a celebrity advertising many products. They don’t see it as added value, butjust as another way for a celebrity to make more money.
- The image of celebrity can change. If it happens for the worse, it will affect the brands they’ve endorsed in terms of building negative perception and doing irreparable damage. We all remember Tiger Woods and how his little scandal affected several world-famous brands and golf industry as a whole.
- While they can help a brand with general exposure, they can’t carry any weight in a particular niche, nor can they help brands to target a specific audience.
The Rise of Social Influencers
Unlike TV, radio or outdoor ads, Social Media platforms offered something completely new to the audience. The ability to subscribe and follow whoever they wanted to. Basically, today, anyone can become Internet famous and turn into a social media influencers.
These people have a profound connection with their audience, built on trust, credibility, authenticity and value. Above all, they maintain close relationships with a community of followers that they have built on their own.
Thanks to the Internet and social media, the influence has been democratized. People who created valuable and useful content have built a large follower base. And companies have recognized this as a potential opportunity for marketing, many of which have launched successful influencer campaigns.
Social Media Influencers vs Celebrities
In order to understand why celebrity endorsement has become history, we have to look at what it has to offer to marketers and brands when compared to influencer marketing.
Let’s start with the most obvious one — connecting with the audience. Celebrities don’t have that kind of relationship with their audience, apart from a few who maintain an active social media engagement. And if they are active on social media it is a completely different type of activity and connection. While, on the other hand, influencers create content to help and inform their audience, thus offering brands to tap into that level of understanding, credibility and connection.
Celebrities are familiar to the general public, and we all know that marketing to the general public is a shot in the dark. Each social media influencer, despite being large-scale or micro influencers, has a unique and specific audience. Even the ones in the same niche do.
Companies prefer engaging with influencers because they can find influencers whose audience is the same as theirs. Instead of getting products and services in front of many people, companies can now get it in front of the right people, not to mention the level of creativity influencers bring to the table.
Celebrities often don’t have the time and the will to create unique content for businesses. Marketers have to think of everything, while the celebrity just shows up. Beside the creativity, influencers can share their powerful insight on the company’s target audience and help you custom-tailor your branding strategy to meet their expectations.
The fact that celebrity endorsement is well on its way to becoming history shouldn’t be a surprise. There are many disadvantages of celebrity endorsement that have made the space for influencer marketing to emerge. It seems that the influencers vs celebrities “fight” is long over, and that the trend of using influencers in marketing is going to shape the online marketing landscape for many years to come.
Originally published at www.creator.ai.
