• It is vital for any brand or business to know when and how to leverage celebrity endorsement and/or influencer marketing for their benefits. I suggest brand or business with limited budget or those that would simply want to test the water of the market, influencer marketing is the go-to method. For instance, if I would like to launch a luxury high-end facial care products in the market, many would assume it make perfect sense to go straight to celebrity endorsement and spend millions on placing commercial advertisements on traditional media channel so I can gain maximum exposure on the market within a snap of time; however, consumers will not purchase my products right off the bat despite seeing familiar celebrity representing my brand because they have doubts regarding the product quality and product efficacy. Therefore, doing a sponsored collaboration with influencers would be a smarter tactic as influencers have the channel and mean to take the time to introduce my brand and to explain my products to the potential buyers.
Interestingly, these experts from various fields do not think that social media influencers will fully replace the role of traditional celebrity in terms of product endorsements. It is no doubt that influencer marketing is certainly get bigger and bigger every year, but the two do not operate under the same function. It really comes down to what the brand aim to achieve including short and long term goals, target demographics and resources available. In the end, celebrities in a sense are influencers too, but their exposure isn’t limited to the digital world; influencers are also somewhat similar to celebrities, but they rely on their specific knowledge of the product or service being promoted rather than the performance skills or talents like celebrities. In short, as long as traditional media still exists, the marketing method of celebrity endorsement isn’t going anytime soon.
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Analysis and Reflection
For the past decades, brands from various industries have been utilizing celebrity endorsements to influence the purchase decisions of the masses. However, in recent years, we can see the trend how many brands have been shifting to influencer marketing as problems with celebrity endorsements are becoming more difficult to be overlook.
One of the most significant problem with celebrity endorsement is that there is no intrinsic reason of why we should value a celebrity’s word over other professionals.
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According to a study conducted by Linqia, the first performance-based influencer marketing company, influencer marketing has become so popular that over 86% of marketers were using it in 2016.
There are four major differences between influencer marketing and traditional celebrity endorsements and brands should make their evaluation base on these to decide which tool best fit their target, in terms of both short and long term goals.
(1) Expertise: Celebrities are known for their talents rather than being experts with in-depth knowledge in certain fields which mean they can be representing any products for any brands as long as they have the qualities that the brands find fit for the endorsed products. However, influencer marketing mainly focuses on the expertise that these social media influencers have for certain type of products. This is an essential feature when utilizing influencer marketing as social influencers may have a higher reliability. In a study conducted by Twitter and Annalect, it shows that the trust level people develop towards influencers are almost as much as their friends.
(2) Content Creation: In traditional celebrity endorsement, the celebrity is typical invited to do photo shoots or campaigns that are already planned by marketing agency or brand’s in-house marketing team. On the other end, influencers are creative content creators that also play the roles in creating the promotional content.
In most cases, brands will give simple guidelines, but no clear instructions and restrictions that allow the influencers to draft the sponsored content in their own style with their own voice and tone. Celebrities are simply the ‘face’ of the campaign, whereas influencers are both the ‘face’ and the ‘brain’ of the it. In short, celebrities represent the brand as similarly to the outer appearance or first impression, whereas influencers can do the same with the addition of drafting content with originality for the endorsed product or service.
(3) Reach: These two types of endorsers acquired and accumulated their fan base and followers through different channels. Celebrities typically have a broader reach across demographics and customer personas as they have built their followers through offline careers. Moreover, influencers have establish their career through various online channels and social media platforms. In comparison, influencers tend to focus on a specific niche target audience. Many would assume that influencers
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are not so different from celebrities as both sign contracts and get paid to product products or services. In reality, influencer marketing is so much more than that because before an influencer can play a part in the marketing campaign, they would need to build relationships with people first to be ‘influential’.
(4) Engagement: When a celebrity is endorsing a product whether it is in the form of TV commercials or digital marketing campaign, these advertisements are more likely to be one-way communications that are meant to be wide spread and expose.
Whereas, even for the same exact endorsed product, the influencers tend to inspire engagement and even to start conversation with their followers. Hence, developing a two-way communication.
A study conducted by Collective Bias, a leader in shopper-focused influencer marketing agency, found that people normally spend an average of 140 seconds on viewing influencer content. Whereas people only spend about 9 seconds viewing online advertisements. If a brand has the ability and fund to fuel their marketing campaign, it is certainly acceptable to try combining both influencer marketing and celebrity endorsement. Whereas the celebrity can be the face of the brand to leave a strong first impression and quickly raise awareness about the brand among the public. On the other end, a brand should also collaborate with relevant influencers across various platforms to establish a closer relationship with its audience.
Especially with influencer marketing, brands are given the convenience to focus on the data to determine the success of any given marketing campaign. In traditional celebrity endorsement, brands often overlook the actual success in terms of sales that the celebrity’s campaign generate because it is difficult to determine whether the increased in popularities or sale figures are a result from the celebrity endorsement.
Unlike traditional celebrity endorsement, there are a lot of statistical data can be collect and evaluate when leveraging influencer marketing. An influencer campaign can generate a vast variety of data including influencers’ followers, impressions, likes, shares, pins, retweets, and the ‘likes’.
As mentioned previously in this paper, the balance theory can be used to explain the impact of celebrity endorsement on consumers’ perception of an endorsed product
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it is endorsed by a celebrity that is liked by the consumer; however, if the endorsed product is one that is already a disliked product, the consumer may eventually and inevitably find the celebrity to be less likeable. In this study, the author designed the questionnaire to investigate whether consumers will find products endorsed by celebrities and social media influencers to have different product qualities and features including price range, the delicacy of packaging, the level of difficulty to purchase the products and the level of pigment of the products.
6.1 Applications
In the modern world with excess amount of information to be process and unlimited advertisements competing to be seen, selecting and utilizing the right mean help your brand to excel. In this day, popular does not always mean influential. Whether a brand choose to work with an influencer or a celebrity, it is essential to pick the right person. In other words, they should not only be able to align their voice with the vision of the brand, but also promote the brands’ objectives in a sincere manner.
Depending on the marketing goals and budget of a business, a different combination and or ratio of celebrity endorsement and influencer marketing should be taken into consideration. If a business relies heavily on must be heard or seen in consumers’ daily life, and the brand has the budget to support it, then a celebrity endorsement is the fastest way to achieve it. On the other end, if the brand is more of a modern business with a highly targeted customer base that relies on consumer relationship, then employing a cross platform approach with influencer marketing is an ideal approach. As consumers are increasing spending more time in the digital world, it is always a good idea to be present where ever the prospective buyers are.
6.2 Limitations
In this study, the amount of data collected should be from a larger sample size to explore this topic thoroughly and ultimately produce an extensive results. The backgrounds and social status of those respondents of the survey also became a restricting factor as they were predominately college or graduate school students with limited earnings; therefore, they may not be a good predictor of purchasing power when determining whether they have purchase products or services recommended by
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celebrity endorsers and/or social media influencers. Future studies recreating this study should expand to a wider range of millennial and Generation Z, generation born between 1996-2010 following millennials, to achieve a set of more credible and versatile findings. Furthermore, while designing the questionnaires, despite author selected advertisements with easily recognizable and well-known celebrities and social media influencers. However, it cannot be confirmed or directly deduct that the respondents of those answering the questionnaires can tell the differences between two type of endorsers.