Celebrity sells. Or so we thought.
A study by AdvertisingAge Magazine, found that getting a celebrity endorsement is a big waste of money for most companies using TV ads to sell their products.
The magazine researched all of the nationally-televised ads for the first 11 months of 2010 and found that celebrity ads are mostly ineffective. Fewer than 12 percent of the celebrity ads surpassed a 10 percent sales lift, and one-fifth actually hurt the ad’s effectiveness, the study found.
According to AdvertisingAge:
Today’s consumer is informed, time-compressed, and difficult to impress, and they are only influenced by ads that are relevant and provide information. They don’t want to have products pushed at them, even from a celebrity. In fact, the data show that relevance and information attributes were key missing ingredients from most celebrity ads.
2010’s Worst Celebrity TV Ads — those that actually sunk the ad’s effectiveness — are as follows:
- Golf pro Tiger Woods for a Nike ad, called “Did you Learn Anything?”.
- Cyclist Lance Armstrong for a Radio Shack ad, called “No Emoticons”.
- ESPN host Kenny Mayne for a Gillette ad, called “Good Segment”.
- Race car driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. for a Nationwide Auto Insurance ad, called “Coverage at the Right Price”.
- Real estate magnate Donald Trump for a Macy’s ad, called “Making Timmy a Mogul”.
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