Celebrity endorsement, also known as celebrity branding or celebrity advertising is a marketing strategy that uses a celebrity’s fame and image to promote a brand or product. Other use cases include not-for-profit organizations that leverage a celebrity’s fame to raise awareness or funding around a cause. Or event marketers leveraging a celebrity’s fame and popularity to create buzz and prestige around their virtual or hybrid event Your celebrity of choice doesn’t need to be a movie star, per se. Brands have produced excellent branding campaigns with music artists, sports personalities, social media influencers, or even fictitious characters like cartoons. The two basic requirements that will define your choice of celebrity are image (does the celebrity represent your values) and following (how large an audience will you reach via this celebrity). More on that in the next section.
Brands partner with celebrities for a number of reasons. According to Forbes contributor Steve Olenski, celebrity endorsement helps increase sales in the short term and brand awareness in the long term. Celebrity marketing is also very effective to mark a major change for a brand, like the introduction of a new product, market expansion, or brand repositioning. Nike traditionally sponsored mainly tennis and track athletes. When they decided to expand their market, they partnered with NBA star Michael Jordan to create a new product line and release a series of ads that yielded tremendous success. Celebrity branding can also be a powerful strategy to differentiate yourself from your competitors and get the edge in a highly competitive market. For Kaltura, the David Duchovny campaign marked a big change in the way we tell our brand story. We shifted our main focus from lead generation campaigns and smart acquisition to include a 360-degree brand awareness campaign.
