Effective Communication Strategy Using Celebrities

development of a strategic framework

project partner: Cameron School of Business, University of North Carolina, USA

In this research project, my co-author James Hunt, Professor of Marketing at UNCW, and I investigated in which context (the type of value proposition of a brand) a certain kind of celebrity personality makes the most effective advertising strategy. We analyzed the data and results of hundreds of studies and condense our findings in a prescriptive framework that allows marketers to identify the most effective celebrity endorsement strategy for their brand or product.

Our special thanks go to the Cameron School of Business and its staff for providing support whenever needed. As well as the team of Research and Instructional Services at William Madison Randall Library at UNCW, their Associate Director Anne in particular, for helping with the data collection.

Moreover, we appreciate the opportunity and honor to publish our work in Psychology & Marketing to share our findings with other researchers and practitioners in communication and advertising strategy.

Abstract

Half a century of research on celebrity endorsement has led to the advancement of four grand celebrity endorsement theories. Most scholars have adopted the meaning transfer model, proposed 30 years ago by Grant McCracken, as the most appropriate theory to explain effective celebrity endorsements. In this conceptual study, we present a literature search and analysis that finds strong support for the validity of all four grand endorsement theories (source credibility, source attractiveness, match‐up hypothesis, and meaning transfer model) and thus show that each theory constitutes an effective construct for a particular set of endorsements. We argue that, contrary to the assertion in the literature, no single theory is able to holistically explain celebrity endorsements. Only a comprehensive framework comprising all theories can explain the great variety of different celebrity endorsements executed in advertising praxis. Moreover, we present a prescriptive framework that allows marketers to identify the most effective celebrity endorsement strategy based on a product’s or brand’s value proposition, as we believe traditional product categories are no longer an appropriate concept on which to base an effective advertising strategy.

Schimmelpfennig, Christian & Hunt, James. (2020)

Fifty years of celebrity endorser research: Support for a comprehensive celebrity endorsement strategy framework

Psychology & Marketing

(37)3, pp. 488-505.

Link to article in journal.