Evolution of Celebrity Endorsement in the Digital Era

Celebrities have been endorsing products/Brands for decades now. While Mark Twain co-branded pens and Ty Cobb had his line of tobacco products in the early 1900s, India was also not behind. The first Indian actress to endorse the Lux soap line was Leela Chitnis in 1941. The marketers believed that a well-known person tends to affect consumer buying behavior significantly. The enticement of a product endorsed by a famous person was powerful then; and an attraction that continues even today.

Businesses of all sizes employ celebrity endorsements as a component of their marketing strategy because, when done right, they offer countless advantages. The simple reality is that consumers in all industries express a heightened interest in products or services endorsed by their favorite celebrities. Companies have the data to support the belief that endorsing their products by a well-known personality will help sell their goods and services.

In the digital disruption age, brands are increasingly challenged to capture people's time and focus; it is a common belief among marketers that brand ambassadors provide a higher degree of consumer recall. This is based on pretty simple logic. In almost every country, people are star-struck by film stars, cricketers, and politicians. People idolize them, so when celebrities are seen in any advertisement promoting a product, it grabs all the eyeballs. The Brand's strategy is to find a way to communicate and engage with the audience, and celebrities become the communication medium. However, it is no longer confined to film stars in this digital era. While movie celebrities bag a significant number of deals, social media stars and sports personalities are also cutting into the celebrity endorsement pie.

Social media has indubitably changed the game and given rise to influencers. Social media offers a new pathway of celebrity endorsement, designed to accommodate the needs of millennials who demand purpose alignment, credibility, and authenticity. According to the report, many ostensible celebrities have earned a name for themselves through blogs and other e-platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. They are the influencers, and brands use them to create word-of-mouth advertising across categories such as fashion, food, fitness, beauty, music, etc. This is known as influencer marketing. While a celebrity is only the spokesperson for a brand in a celebrity endorsement, an influencer is seen as having created the message in influencer marketing. Brands are now leveraging celebrity influencers in target audience circles to promote the products that influencers believe in, use, share and endorse.

Celebrity endorsements can often reap colossal rewards for a brand, and there are multiple reasons why brands approach celebrities. At their core, brand endorsements are justified for three reasons: sustainability, revival, and launch.

The primary motivation behind utilizing a celebrity influencer is sustenance, or the Brand's desire to maintain its recall value in the minds of its customers. The industry analysis claims that celebrity-driven TV commercials increase consumer recall. This reminds me of the fashion brand Voonik's first TV commercial, which debuted in 2015 with the help of Farah Khan, a well-known Indian director, and choreographer; the campaign recall exceeded the category norm just three weeks after the commercial's debut. Yepme, a pioneer in the online fashion industry, aired a TV commercial with Shah Rukh Khan, which aided in the Brand's development of saliency and attribution.

Revival is the process of essentially bringing the Brand out of obscurity using the endorser's popularity. For instance, Godrej enlisted Aamir Khan in 2013 to boost the Brand's attractiveness.

Last but not least, the launch aims to make a good first impression while capitalizing on the endorser's notable appearance, much as how most phone brands use movie actors in India.

To put it briefly, a celebrity is no longer only the face of the Brand. He or she serves as a spokesperson, an ambassador, and a social media influencer. According to the research, a celebrity is typically signed on by a business for one to two years with three to four days of TV/print shoots or event appearances, which breaks down a typical endorsement arrangement. Brands that plan on utilizing celebrities for multiple campaigns usually put down a higher number of days as analyzed by artificial intelligence-driven optimization algorithms in the contract to get a better ROI from the investment. Additionally, brands have started to consider formal collaborations with celebrities. For instance, Sonam and Rhea Kapoor partnered with Shoppers Stop to create their apparel collection Rheson, but they will still fully own the Brand. In the case of Deepika Padukone's All About You, the intellectual property is joint ownership between Deepika and Myntra, which has a profit-sharing arrangement.

The market survey shows that personal care brands have spent the most on celebrity endorsements, followed by the apparel industry, which frequently uses movie stars for advertising a line of clothing tied to a specific movie. The employment of brand ambassadors in e-commerce has increased at an astonishing rate in recent years. Almost all major e-commerce giants have partnered with and hired celebrities for multi-million dollar transactions. On the other hand, current trends have been negative for the home appliances category. While female stars dominate the personal care and consumer durables category, male celebrities rule the automobiles and e-commerce sectors for endorsements.

But what are the parameters for a great endorser? Can a celebrity have the ideal combination of qualities to become the most sought-after brand endorser? Celebrities are pretty known personalities with huge fan followings who have immense potential to impact your sales and brand goodwill in a positive/negative manner through celebrity brand endorsement. Different celebrities help in accomplishing varieties of objectives. If you feel your products are more for a defined audience, look for a celebrity with that following. And here, Data-Driven analysis plays a significant role.

In addition to star/celebrity power analysis, other artificial intelligence-driven analysis also enables brands to consider the right candidate characteristics like risk tolerance and brand fit. According to the market report, the top few influencers in India or outside have several features that make them appealing as brand endorsers. Few of the Artificial Intelligence-driven analyses that can help in appointing the right celebrities and influencers:

a) Credibility and market perception analysis: AI-Driven analysis of knowledge and skills that the celebrity stands for.

b) Attractiveness Analysis: Machine Learning algorithms to understand the likeability, familiarity, the similarity of the celebrity with the Brand.

c) Star Power Analysis: Predictive algorithms to understand the mass appeal affecting consumers' buying behavior

d) Relatability Analysis: Analyzing the perceived and desired need of the consumers to understand how the consumers should relate to the ambassador.

e) Return on Investment (ROI) Analysis: This analysis will help the Brands to understand the return perspective

f) Influencer Network Analysis: ML algorithms to understand the key opinion leaders

Today, influencers are surpassing mainstream celebrities as the primary source of endorsements. According to the market analysis, given the fragmentation of the media today and the ongoing movement in attention from celebrity brand ambassadors to essential opinion leaders, firms may opt to use a single ambassador across all platforms or have numerous faces for a campaign as part of their brand strategy. Brands should consider celebrities' social media followings and presence when choosing influencers to work with. In truth, social media will continue to allow brands to judge the success of these celebrity-led efforts since it offers direct and occasionally real-time input, which helps brands to compute ROI more quickly.