Celebrity endorsement

A celebrity endorsement is when a famous person promotes a product or service. The idea is that those who view a print ad or commercial will view the celebrity as credible and will be persuaded to buy whatever is being sold. Celebrities who commonly endorse products include athletes, actors, and singers. While most companies seek endorsements from current stars, even individuals whose fame has faded can still draw interest and attention from viewers. If a company is able to get a current star, entertainment media outlets may provide additional publicity for free. No matter if the celebrity is current or not, the idea is to match the public figure to the service or product being pitched. For example, athletes often endorse sports equipment and shoes, and movie stars appear in commercials and ads for cosmetics and hair care products.

Background

Celebrity endorsements date back to the end of the nineteenth century. In the 1890s, a famous actor named Lily Langtry appeared in print ads for a soap company called Pears. As a part of the campaign, Langtry affirmed that Pears was the only soap she used. The hope was that women seeing the ad would associate the soap with Langtry’s beauty and buy it.

When radio shows were at the height of their popularity between the 1920s and the 1950s, the comedians, singers, actors, and actresses from those shows were often asked to endorse products. This would typically be in character for a main show sponsor. One example was comedian Jack Benny, who made pitches on behalf of Jell-O. Legendary entertainer Bob Hope pushed Pepsodent toothpaste, while husband-and-wife comedy team George Burns and Gracie Allen talked about the virtues of Carnation Milk. Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, who would become early TV stars as well as radio personalities, spoke on behalf of Aunt Jemima pancake mix.

Sponsors quickly discovered that stars sold products well. Fans of the performers wanted to be like their idols, and they would buy the things their idols liked. This held true as television became America’s dominant medium of entertainment in the 1950s. Early TV ads included John Wayne talking about his preferred brand of cigarettes and actor Ronald Reagan expressing the virtues of a specific brand of hand cleaner.

In addition to entertainers, sports figures were rapidly recruited to add their credibility to products. Wheaties cereal was an early leader in this area, recruiting Pittsburgh Pirates baseball star Ralph Kiner for product ads in the 1950s. The idea was that Wheaties gave sports stars the energy they needed for athletic success, and those who ate Wheaties could be just like them. This was a successful approach for the company, and they continued it for decades with sports figures such as Olympic gold medalist Mary Lou Retton in the 1980s and soccer star Mia Hamm in the late 1990s. Wheaties continued to rely on celebrity endorsement into the twenty-first century, including Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps and NBA star Stephen Curry, among many others.

Celebrity Endorsements Today

Professional athletes and actors still endorse products. However, obtaining their services has gotten much more expensive; star athletes often sign long-term deals worth millions of dollars. Key examples include tennis pro Venus Williams, who signed a five-year, $40 million deal with Reebok in 2009. She has also made big deals with Avon, American Express, and Kraft. Boxer George Foreman wound up with a deal totaling $137.25 million after putting his name on a successful grill and making infomercials to sell it. Soccer star David Beckham signed a $160 million deal with Adidas, and golfer Tiger Woods signed a five-year, $20 million contract with Nike. In 2015, LeBron James signed an unprecedented lifetime endorsement deal with Nike, estimated at over $1 billion, just one of the many endorsement deals he had secured since becoming a professional basketball player in 2003, thus making him one of the highest-paid athletes in the world.

The Tiger Woods deal underscores a central problem with celebrity endorsements. Woods had a highly publicized scandal that involved his infidelity, first reported on in 2009, which affected his public perception. In the twenty-first century, paparazzi are everywhere, as are everyday people, who can snap pictures and take video of celebrities in compromising positions. Unflattering news can go global via the internet almost instantly. Thus, the personal problems of sports or entertainment stars often become news stories, which then taints the products that the star’s name was meant to boost. This has happened on many occasions.

In one case, talk show host Kathie Lee Gifford found out in 1996 about problematic labor conditions at a Honduras facility where her clothing line was manufactured. This caused significant embarrassment for Walmart, the retailer who sold the clothes and for Gifford herself, even if she was not involved in the exploitative labor practices at the facility. Similarly, Martha Stewart’s legal problems, which culminated in a prison sentence for insider training in 2004, became a reputation problem for Kmart, which sold her “Everyday” line of products. In 2005, fashion company Chanel dropped model spokesperson Kate Moss after pictures were released indicating that she had used drugs.

In addition to reputation issues, sometimes stars publicly admit that they do not actually use the products they have been paid to endorse. One such case involved actress Cybill Shepherd, who filmed ads for the Beef Industry Council in 1986. Soon afterward, she stated publicly that she did not eat red meat. This statement represented a conflict of interest with the Beef Industry Council, which canceled her contract.

Since then, sponsoring companies have made it clear that celebrities should publicly affirm using the products they endorse. After all, the value of celebrity endorsements is having the celebrity’s fans believe that they use the product in question. Correspondingly, stars with big money deals for particular products are careful now to confirm that they do use what they endorse.

Sometimes a celebrity endorsement can be a conflict of interest for celebrities, damaging their image or that of the product they endorse. For example, in a commercial that aired during the 2015 Super Bowl, actor Scarlett Johansson endorsed SodaStream, a company that makes home carbonation products. The Israeli company operated a manufacturing facility in the West Bank. Johansson had also been a visible ambassador for Oxfam International, a humanitarian organization, which condemned her endorsement of a company it deems to be conducting trade illegally. Johansson was forced to sever ties with Oxfam. Though this conflict of interest did not initially damage her reputation as an actor, it represented a cautionary tale about the risks a celebrity takes when they endorse a product. (A company takes a similar risk when choosing a celebrity to endorse its product.)

The rise of social media in the twenty-first century gave celebrities a new way to engage with advertisers and audiences, as they leveraged social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram to promote brands. The shift has allowed for more direct and personal engagement with consumers. Further, many celebrities began launching their own brands, rather than endorsing another company's product. Reality television star Kim Kardashian's Skims shapewear brand and actor Ryan Reynold's Aviation American Gin are successful examples of this strategy. Celebrity endorsements also increasingly focused on sustainability and social responsibility, such as singer Billie Eilish's partnership with Nike in 2022 to create vegan, eco-friendly sneakers. That collaboration boosted not only Nike's brand visibility but also brought attention to the importance of sustainable fashion.

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