zowhy.com – The impact of advertising is taking a very big part in marketing sector, particularly in the consumer products industry (consumer goods). In short, advertising is needed to build awareness from the targeted consumers to the offered brand, for example, at the launching of a new product or promoting a product that is not yet widely known.
If the product is already on the market, advertising can used to remind the existence of a brand or to increase the number of consumers. Moreover, the advertisement can be managed to build a positive image of a brand.
How effective are the ads that was created by your marketing team? One of the early measure to indicate the effectiveness of an advertisement is that the targeted consumers remember the ad. To be remembered by the targeted consumer, the ad must be able to attract attention.
To make an attractive advertisement, marketers are willingly to allocate a huge budget in the making of spectacular advertisment, including using a famous model. However, if it is not well-planned and well-executed, the usage of a celebrity or popular figure can bring the vampire effect.
Vampires are mythological creatures in the European legend who like to suck blood from other living creatures for survival. Vampire effect appeared on Erfgen research, Zenker, and Slattler (2015).
This term is used to describe conditions that are also found in several previous studies, in which the consumers are better in remembering the celebrity than the brand promoted in an ad. It can be caused by several reasons.
First, the lack of assosiation between the celebrity with the advertised brand. Stand-up comedy Celebrity might not be suitable to advertise shipping engineering major at a university, because consumers do not see the connection in their rational reasoning between the celebrity’s competence with the majors, but there is an exception if the celebrities is currently studying or is one of the alumni from that major he advertised.
How To Be Effeftive In Deflecting The Vampire Effects Furthermore, the celebrity’s current profession need to be make sense with the major he/she promoted.
Second to point is the celebrity status. Consumers better in remembering the celebrity, because he/she was a prominent politician, the award-winning movie star, well-known singer, or a champion of a major sport competition, so that the celebrity status is much more powerful than the advertised brand. It is far more complicated if the status he/she gained so far does not correspond at all to the advertised brand.
The third and no less important is the physical attractiveness. Beautiful face, cool and sexy figure or athleticly muscled body undeniably are a strong appeal for several famous celebrities. An attractive physical appearance often causes consumers to remember the name of the model than the brand of products promoted.How To Be Effeftive In Deflecting The Vampire Effects
Then, is it mean that using celebrities as an advertising model was the wrong step? Of course not. The fact is a lot of brands gained a big success in the market thanks to the advertisment using celebrity. There are several keys to success in making celebrities as an effective ambassador for the brand marketing.
Research has proven that the vampire effects is declined when celebrities was being managed in marketing communication of a well-known brand. But in the research of Erfgen (2015), this was not proven.
Marketers can optimize the positive sides of celebrities in advertising their brand and must pay attention to several things, so the vampire effects can be overcomed.
First, the suitability of the value and character of a celebrity with the advertised brand. Some famous brands managed to build a strong association between the celebrities with the brand. A brand is not just a logo, but also a reprensentative that has character and self-image like the celebrities are.
A brand can show the elegant and fancy or the simple and humble, masculine or feminine, modern or traditional, and so on, then the celebrities who are hired to promote must have and match the value and character of a brand to be advertised. The higher the suitableness between the celebrity and the brand makes the higher the effectiveness of these ads. Celebrity’s good reputation is another important part to note.
Secondly, there is a rational relationship between the celebrities and brands. Celebrities generally close to the brands that support their lifestyle and personal appearances.
For examples, we are often seen the appearance of well-known athletes to promote sports equipment, a beautiful artist with smooth and healthy skin face for premium cosmetics brands, a celebrity with athletic body is being a model of a modern fitness center. The consumers will better capture the relationship between a celebrity’s appearance and competency with a brand of the promoted product when it is based on an acceptable logic.
Thirdly, is it a celebrity has been widely promoted by the brands of the same product category or other product? It is very important to avoid confusion inside the consumers’ mind about the brand itself and a diversion of profits for other brands that firstly take action of hiring the same celebrity. If consumers have identified the celebrity with a particular brand, the option to use he/she as a model of other brands are becoming less effective.
Fourth, calculate the costs needed to allocate with the potential benefits. Using celebrities certainly efforts a highly cost, not to mention the cost to put up advertising frequently enough so that the targeted consumers are able to remember the ad.
Nonetheless, those actions can be effective if they achieve returns and benefits, also increase positive brand image for the brand that is advertised, and ideally provide benefits for consumers.
The demanding actions and pressures from company management is higher and higher on the performance of the marketing department. Any costs incurred will trigger consequency and impact.
Time pressure is even more suffocating, so vividly, because the results are expected to be obtained instantaneously. Celebrity is one of the options to help increasing the targeted consumers’ awareness of the brand. The next is consumers are expected to love and have the desire to buy the brand’s products, even make repeated purchases.
Nevertheless, the usage of celebrities is needed to be synchronized with proper consideration and being optimized comprehensively in integrated marketing communications. Marketing research can help to detect any possibility of a vampire effects so it can be prevented before they occur. How To Be Effeftive In Deflecting The Vampire Effects