When using celebrity advertising endorsement, the personality/image of the selected celebrity must be highly consistent with the personality/image of the brand and product. However, people have different views on the personality/image of stars. If there is no objective and rigorous investigation among target customers, enterprises will often make wrong judgments and choices about the personality/image of stars because of irrational factors such as the personal preferences of decision makers.

It is very problematic for Yangshengtang, which is good at advertising planning, to use Li Yingai's celebrity endorsement for the first time. Yangshengtang thinks that Li Yingai personally represents "beauty, goodness and elegance as tea", but Li Yingai is widely recognized as the personality image of "smart, hardworking, enterprising and not afraid of setbacks" in inspirational plays. Movie stars are different from singers/sports stars, and most of their personality images come from the screen. Can the great achievement of "being smart, hardworking, enterprising and not afraid of setbacks" represent the brand personality of Nongfu Camellia?

Lively and funny entertainment star He Jiong (although his other identity is a university teacher, how many people know? ) endorsement of e- 100% learning machine obviously violates the essential attribute of "earnest, diligent and learning first" implied in the learning machine product itself. How many parents who want to succeed are willing to buy it?

Even more surprising, Chanel, a famous luxury brand, chose CoCo Lee as its advertising spokesperson. Chanel brand stands for "elegance", while CoCo Lee's personality image is "vitality, sexiness and boldness", which are not related. This can get the voice of a senior lady in Hong Kong?

Even famous companies such as Yangshengtang and Chanel, which are very familiar with brand/advertising operations, will misjudge the choice of celebrity spokespersons. As for domestic companies that don't even know the brand personality of their products or even have a positioning, they are more choices.

2. Creative production risks of star advertisements.

The soul of advertising is creativity. Creativity is the combination of art and rational strategy, which dances in chains. Good ideas are usually hard to come by. However, star advertising creativity bears additional multiple shackles, and it is even more difficult to create an advertisement that everyone applauds.

Extra shackles 1: Does advertising creativity focus on products/brands or stars? If there is no celebrity endorsement, there is no doubt that all creativity must focus on the product/brand, but because of the huge amount of celebrity endorsement, "it costs tens of millions of yuan, and there are not many stars in the advertisement. Is it not a waste? " Many enterprises have given up the principle of simplicity, so many mediocre advertisements are flooding the screen. Several sports shoes advertisements in Jinjiang, Fujian are retarded advertisements such as "* * * stars, running in xx sports shoes, and then pop up pictures of stars shouting: I like xx".

Additional shackles 2: How to reflect the combination of star personality and product/brand personality in creative expression? It is even more difficult for an enterprise to rationally find a star that conforms to the product/brand personality, but it should be skillfully and organically reflected in the advertisement. From the perspective of professional creativity, it is not as good as ordinary creative performances that can spread from many angles.

Extra shackles 3: Limited by star time/schedule. The more big-name stars, the tighter the time schedule, and the advertising production date of most enterprises must follow the star's schedule. Therefore, the creativity and shooting time of star advertisements are often very urgent, and the work is slow and the radish is not washed. In this environment, the probability of good ideas is greatly reduced. What's more, some stars only give a few hours of shooting time and don't devote themselves wholeheartedly. In this way, the production quality of advertising films can be imagined.

Taking the star advertisement of Yangshengtang Nongfu Camellia as an example, its creative starting point is very good. "The water for making tea is the best", taking water as the core selling point and sticking to the brand equity of Nongfu Spring is a typical rational appeal. However, because of the endorsement of big stars, the visual expression of "beauty and elegance" and the emotional appeal of "people who enjoy good water and tea" have been abruptly added. Can an advertisement express so many irrelevant topics? People are most concerned about the taste of tea drinks. What does it have to do with beauty and elegance? It is far-fetched to get involved with "good people" Obviously, Yangshengtang, which has always been confident, has also lost itself in grasping the demands of focusing on stars or products and water sources. In the creative expression of advertisements, the well-planned Yangshengtang has also been bound by big stars.

It is not easy to find stars that meet the requirements of enterprises, and it is even more difficult to make high-level advertisements by using star creativity. Few enterprises can successfully cross the risk threshold of creative production.

3. The risk of celebrity effect.

Stars are often "meteors", most of which are popular for less than three years. "Andy Lau, Jackie Chan, Song Zu Ying", a real evergreen tree, is very rare. Sports stars are restricted by physical limits and have shorter life spans. When a star becomes a "past tense", its brand also represents "outdated and aging". The popularity of celebrity endorsements is very risky.

Celebrity endorsement is to use the celebrity's popularity first. The premise is that the "popularity" of celebrities should be strong enough and lasting. However, stars are accompanied by "fashion" and are popular. Where there is tide, there is tide. Who can guarantee that the "super girl" heat wave will last for many years? How popular was Liu Xiaoqing/Deng Yaping/kristiansand Philip at that time?

The risk of celebrity popularity is accompanied by the risk of "popularity" transplantation-can celebrity popularity be successfully transplanted to products, and customers will immediately associate their products/brands when they mention celebrities? Because there are celebrity endorsements in the industry (the core is to make more money), Chris Lee endorsed "Shenzhou Computer, Coca Cola ..." Guo Jingjing endorsed "Xizhilang, McDonald's ..." and married five husbands; Liu Xiang endorsed nearly ten brands of "Nike, Baisha, Yili ..."; How many customers can remember such a messy product endorsed by a celebrity? Customers pursue simplicity and instinctively resist chaos. As a result, customers only remember the stars but can't remember the products, and manufacturers spend huge sums of money to become the "wedding clothes" of the stars.

4. Moral hazard of stars

Stars are first and foremost ordinary people, and they are uncertain. Many of them are bound to have such moral problems as "eating, drinking, whoring and gambling, being romantic, gathering people to fight, and evading taxes". Stars are not ordinary people, but public figures with little privacy. The possible moral problems are the focus of many media reports.

Celebrity endorsement means that celebrities and endorsed products become "the same fate". Once a celebrity has a moral problem (which may be a fact or a rumor) considered by the media/public, the enterprise will be out of luck. Since people will like my house and dog, they will hate my house and dog. Enterprises have to pay for the negative impact of celebrity spokespersons on the public due to personal moral incidents, and there is no room for compensation.

PepsiCo once invited superstar Michael Jackson to speak for it. With its great appeal among young people, PepsiCo established the brand image of "the choice of a new generation", but when Michael was caught in the whirlpool of sex scandal and drug abuse, PepsiCo had to reluctantly give up what one favours.

"Green Eight-treasure Porridge" invited Ying Da and Song Dandan to shoot advertisements to convey the family's love and happiness. I didn't expect Ying Da and Song Dandan, a model couple in the film and television industry, to get a high-profile divorce just after filming the advertisement. On the one hand, the media widely reported the celebrity family moral problems caused by the marriage of Ying Da and Song Dandan, and on the other hand, they were a series of family happiness advertisements, which were enough to consume the brand value of "green eight-treasure porridge".

Similarly, TCL color TV has gained a good reputation because of Liu Xiaoqing's endorsement, and its moral hazard caused by tax evasion and imprisonment has seriously affected TCL's brand image.

5. Event risk of stars

Similar to the moral hazard of stars, there will always be various events around them. If it is a good thing (charity, love and help, charity performance, etc.). ), it will naturally be icing on the cake; However, the media is more concerned about the "accidents" of the stars. Gossip star news mostly focuses on negative events, and the negative star image will inevitably affect the image of its endorsement products/brands.

After the "military flag" incident in Zhao Wei was widely reported, the image of Amoi mobile phone endorsed by it plummeted, and the sales volume plummeted.

The false advertising incident of "Xinxing Hospital" in Tang Guoqiang has seriously affected his social image of "justice and authority", and it is a big blow to the brands such as home appliances and medicine that he also endorses.

If sports stars are used as advertising endorsements, there is a special risk of "achievement" events, and their competition results directly affect their "popularity" and image, and at the same time affect the image of their endorsement products.

At the World Cup in Korea and Japan, China failed to score a goal, which disappointed fans all over the country. The advertisement of Jinliufu Liquor endorsed by the national football coach (Milu in the TV advertisement is still showing off "I am so lucky to drink Fuxing Liquor" with his thumb) is still playing, which can only have the opposite effect, and the psychological hint of consumers has become "I can't do it, and neither can you".

6. Health risks of stars

This is the most uncontrollable life risk. Once a star gets sick, the quality of health care products and medicines he endorses will be seriously questioned by the public. If anything happens to a star and he dies unexpectedly, it will be a fatal blow to the brand he speaks for.

Just when Gao Xiumin and Fu Biao, two young stars, died suddenly, their advertisements for blood-enriching granules and non-stick pots aroused many consumers' doubts, thinking that they were disrespectful to the deceased. Enterprises do not benefit, but suffer.

Longrich spent a lot of money to ask Gao Xiumin to endorse his daily chemical products. Unexpectedly, Gao Xiumin died suddenly before the advertisement aired, which caught Longrich off guard. Later, the company had to re-plan the commercial film, but the peak season of product sales had passed, and the overall marketing of Longrich was seriously frustrated.

Among the six risks summarized above, the first two risks (star selection risk and advertising creative production risk) are controllable risks of enterprises, which can be solved theoretically, but few enterprises can successfully overcome them in reality because of irrational factors in choice judgment and the difficulty of creativity; The latter four kinds (celebrity popularity, morality, events and health risks) are uncontrollable risks of enterprises. As independent individuals, celebrity endorsement enterprises have no reason and cannot enforce their popularity, morality and health. Once individual risks occur, the risks of enterprises are inevitable.

Analysis and summary

The benefits that a star can bring to a brand are determined by the nature of advertising. As for the ability of consumers, advertising is generally a sense of security and identity of consumers, and even a fanaticism about brands. And this kind of trust and fanaticism is exactly what stars have.

For enterprises, the problem to be solved is nothing more than how to get the highest possible market income with the lowest advertising endorsement cost.

For a long time in the past, the stars in advertisements often had the status of experts. The subtext of communication is often "believe me, there is nothing wrong." At that time, the status of stars in the public mind was really unattainable, but today, few consumers will take the words of stars as oracles. Playing cool in advertisements is obviously not suitable for the current communication environment where grassroots consciousness prevails. With the bridge of stars, the key to communication is to realize the communication between brands and consumers.

The second point that deserves special mention is the cycle of celebrity endorsement. The entertainment circle is changing, and today's star-making ability is unprecedented, which really makes many enterprises see it. It is expensive to change spokespersons frequently, but always the same face will inevitably make you feel bored. What should we do? The best way is to formulate a careful communication strategy, so that your spokespersons can speak for the brand in stages and at different levels. The combination of Jay Chou and M-Zone is very telling. From the initial musical theme of "My site is my master" to the end, Jay Chou has become one of the distinctive brand symbols in the M-Zone. Frequent change of spokespersons may get attention in a short time, but it is unfavorable to the in-depth spread of the brand in the end.

Finally, I want to share with you a diversified endorsement reference. In the past, many enterprises focused on the road of performing stars, and the road was not easy when there were too many people crowded. It is common for a star to endorse several brands at the same time. A familiar face popped up on TV, and he really couldn't react at the moment what product he was selling. With the approaching of the Olympic Games, there are more and more advertisements endorsed by sports stars. While Liu Xiang and Yao Ming created the honor of China athletes, they also brought the enthusiasm of China enterprises for sports to a new height. To make a fuss about sports stars, we should not only look at a successful athlete, but also learn more about the present situation and achievements of sports in China and discover more exciting and diverse sports. Many excellent athletes in China are actually brand treasures to be developed.