Endorsement Practice: How Agencies Select Spokespeople

This research explores how an advertising agency selects a celebrity endorser. The study was conducted in two phases: in-depth interviews that helped the researchers have a greater understanding of the underlying process and a survey mailed to advertising agencies to better examine the steps of the model and test various hypotheses.

Endorsement Practice: How Agencies Select Spokespeople

B. Zafer ErdoganBilecik University, Turkey

Tanya DrollingerUniversity of Lethbridge, Canada

INTRODUCTION

Perhaps the most compelling reason to juxtapose brands with celebrities is that much-admired characteristics may transfer to products they endorse (McCracken, 1989). In turn, this may boost the marketing-communications effectiveness by helping messages stand out from surrounding clutter, thereby improving communicative ability. Although their positive impact on economic returns of sponsoring companies is well documented (Agrawal and Kamakura, 1995; Farrell, Karels, Montfort, and McClatchey, 2000; Mathur, Mathur, and Rangan, 1997), celebrities can present such risks as public controversy and overexposure. In...

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