It might just depend on what they’re selling…
Celebrities appeared in about 40% of 2014’s Super Bowl commercials. This percentage has remained consistent over the past couple of years. But this year, more advertisers opted to use multiple celebrities. The more the merrier, right? That might apply to some advertising tactics – but not necessarily for celebrity appearances.
Radio Shack, Pistachio, Kia, Bud Light, Jaguar, Dannon Oikos, and Honda are just some of the brands that featured celebrities in their Super Bowl spot. Between Stephen Colbert, the cast of Full House, Laurence Fishburne, and dozens of 80s super heroes, celebrities were thick on the Super Bowl ad field.
Celebrities have always been popular choices for advertising campaign, but are they a smart investment for brand advertisers? Short answer: Sometimes.
In general, celebrities aren’t a guaranteed success. Celebrities don’t buy the brand any greater persuasive power. They aren’t any better at generating engagement than other creative commercial approaches. Crucially, celebrities often distract the viewer from the brand or product being advertised.
The one exception seems to be in the automotive category. We have found that because so many car advertisers buy Super Bowl spots, the clutter and cross-brand confusion for this sector is intense. This tends to cause lower engagement and weaker branding for the entire automotive category. It’s a challenge for these brands to make an impact and persuade viewers with one Super Bowl execution.
This is when the brand can benefit from the clever use of celebrities. The performance of automotive commercials in this year’s Super Bowl revealed that famous faces significantly helped car companies. They boosted brand linkage by 33% and increased branded engagement by nearly 60%. Further, the chances of persuasion were more than five times greater for celebrity commercials. However, more wasn’t necessarily better: the spots using more than one celebrity fared no better in these performance metrics than those that featured only a single celeb.
The Communicus Best Use of Celebrity award, in the automotive category, goes to Kia. Laurence Fishburne helped the brand to successfully differentiate the new Kia K900 luxury sedan from competitors. This aided in building purchase intention and actual investigations of the model. Ellen DeGeneres, who appeared in the ad for Beats Music, was the only celeb who helped move the needle for a non-automotive product.
Bottom line: Using a celebrity is not a magic ticket to meeting business objectives with a commercial. But deploying the famous personality in a way that keeps the focus on the brand, and is consistent with the celebrity’s persona, is an advertiser’s best bet at a winning celebrity ad.
