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Are the celebrities always effective?

The use of advertising has changed over the past 100 years, from the classic to the modern school.The modern advertising strategies various appeals are included, such as sexual, chock, emotional, fear, and humor. The main purpose of these appeals is to deliver the information that the company seeks to send to gain high brand awareness and brand recognition among a large audience. However, when using any of these appeals there is always a person included, sometimes someone unknown or in most cases a well known person in the public eye. According to McCracken (1989), well-known person tends to have a greater effect on consumer buying behavior.  He also says that when it comes to transferring meanings to brands celebrity endorser are effective. Are they always effective?

Tiger Woods

When a celebrity gets associated with negative information (e.g Kate Moss, Tiger Woods) seems to have the tendency to damage the company's image. This is mainly due to the fact that high credibility as well as negativity effect has a tendency to be more reflected upon positive information in the consumer's evaluation.Till and Shimp (1998) explain that companies have to be aware of the possibility of attaining negative publicity when using celebrities as endorsers, since this may affect the consumers' perception of the brand. Negative information about a celebrity can harm how consumers perceive the product/brand through the connected link between the brand and celebrity Till and Shimp (1998).
 Sometimes the selection of a celebrity endorser can be very complex!!!

The Metrosexual Phenomenon!!!

Street Style

A (quite) new name for something quite old. Men with taste & style who know about fashion, art, and culture have always existed. In past centuries, these kinds of men were in the uppercrust of society (more leisure time). Technology  and the increasing income of young men has enabled them with more leisure time and money, so males can now fuss over their looks and aesthetics almost as much as women.

Mark Simpson invented this term in 1994, and it drifted slowly from one media source to another throughout the rest of 1990s and early 2000s. Then Simpson wrote another article about metrosexuals in the online magazine Salon.com on July 22, 2002, and the term took off.

''Chuck Buss''- Gossip Girl

"The typical metrosexual is a young man with money to spend, living in or within easy reach of a metropolis — because that's where all the best shops, clubs, gyms and hairdressers are. He might be officially gay, straight or bisexual, but this is utterly immaterial because he has clearly taken himself as his own love object and pleasure as his sexual preference. Particular professions, such as modeling, waiting tables, media, pop music and, nowadays, sport, seem to attract them but, truth be told, like male vanity products and herpes, they're pretty much everywhere"', ( Mark Simpson, 2002).

David Beckham-GQ

The promotion of metrosexuality was left to the men's style press, magazines such as The Face, GQ, Esquire, Arena and FHM, the new media which took off in the Eighties and is still growing (GQ gains 10,000 new readers every month). They filled their magazines with images of narcissistic young men sporting fashionable clothes and accessories. And they persuaded other young men to study them with a mixture of envy and desire. 

 What women think about metrosexual....??

 

''It was then that I realized why my dating life has been as mysterious as the Bermuda Triangle since I arrived in Washington. This city, unlike any other place I've lived, is a haven for the metrosexual. A metrosexual, in case you didn't catch any of several newspaper articles about this developing phenomenon (or the recent "South Park" episode on Comedy Central), is a straight man who styles his hair using three different products (and actually calls them "products"), loves clothes and the very act of shopping for them, and describes himself as sensitive and romantic. In other words, he is a man who seems stereotypically gay except when it comes to sexual orientation'' (Alexa Hackbarth, "Vanity, Thy Name Is Metrosexual," The Washington Post, November 17, 2003).

CartoonStock

"The perfect feminine beauty"

Angelina Jolie-Vanity Fair

“With the advent of movies and television, the rules of femininity have come to be culturally transmitted more and more through standardized visual images… We are no longer given verbal descriptions or exemplars of what a lady is or of what femininity consists.”(Bordo, 1993).
This feminine ideal which feminist theorists argue is further generated and reinforced by women’s magazines through the use of such ‘models’ seems to imply that the body is never feminine enough: “that they must be deliberately and oftentimes painfully remade to be what ‘nature’ intended” (Urla & Swedlund, 1995: 240).

Gisele Bunchen- Vogue

The ideal of feminine beauty and the perfect body as promoted and reinforced by the cosmetic, weight-loss and fashion industries create in women a “dark vein of self hatred, physical obsessions, terror of aging, and dread of lost control”(Wolf, 1991) while paradoxically offering a sense of female unity through both positive and negative representation: that popularity with men comes from the achievement of the ideal and popularity with women comes from an empathy and sense of unity in achieving the ideal.

Eva Mendes- Marie Claire

Eva Mendes - Endorser for Calvin Klein

Celebrity images and women’s magazines are a key factor influencing the ideal of feminine beauty and the perfect body in relation to the formation of self. There have been several studies into the influences which magazines have upon women and the formation of gendered identity and on the importance of celebrity in modern culture. Wolf references an interview conducted with a women’s magazine reader which summarizes these relationships: the young woman describes buying such magazines “as a form of self-abuse. They give me a weird mixture of anticipation and dread" (Wolf, 1991).

Kate Moss- Elle

Celebrity Gossip Magazines

Hello! (UK),  April 2012

In recent times, celebrity magazines have jumped to the forefront of the reader's circle when it comes to magazines. In fact, celebrity magazines have become more popular than news magazines or public interest magazines.Celebrities have always been popular, and people have always liked to subscribe to them. Celebrity gossip magazines are targeted at a largely young, female audience; catering for those who are interested in celebrity gossip and scandal, often through the use of paparazzi photography (Holmes, 2005). One of the key features of these publications is critiquing celebrities for not looking at their best; whether in terms of dress or physical appearance.

OK! (USA), April 2012

These magazines highlight the significance of such features within their own publications, stating that they are “packed with exclusive interviews, up-to-date gossip and photos of our favorite stars”. The sense of surreal intimacy with celebrities means that “their private lives will attract greater public interest than their professional lives”(Turner, 2004) and with celebrity gossip magazines such as OK! and Closer, and the increasing number of celebrities famous for nothing more than being famous which they endorse, this trend is likely to continue.

Closer, February 2012

Product Placement

Product placement place an increasingly important role in the advertisement of consumers goods, including clothing and accessories. Research suggests that audiences tend to have a positive attitude towards product placement when they believe that the practice increases the realism of media content (Lee et al., 2011). Research also indicates that the naturalistic representation of brands reinforces the integrity of factionalised storylines and reflects the 'real life' experiences of the audience in the entertainment media setting (DeLorme and Reid, 1999).

Sex & the City

 Furthermore film and television product placement have been found to enhance brand awareness, attitudes and purchase intent (Russell, 2002). Product placement acts in a more unobtrusive way be evoking the positive association, aspiration, and symbolic meaning connected with the underlying movie content (Roussell, 1998). Consumers connect the film world to their own, mapping the film (DeLorme and Reid, 1999), which in turn influence attitudes and consumption norms (Pechmann and Shih, 1999).

Gossip girl

 

Vintage Mania!!!

Vintage clothes are growing in desirability, and celebrities who aren’t afraid to show off their unique style are always the first to flaunt their vintage finds. Some celebrities collect vintage items, such as Beyonce, who collects vintage Chanel, while other celebrities love to wear vintage because it makes them stand out from the Hollywood pack, such as Chloe Sevigny.

Choe Sevigny

 Way back in 1997 the New York Times did an article about the increasing popularity of vintage couture. The article referenced the fact that Barbra Streisand was known to purchase and perform in womens vintage clothing. In fact, she is credited as being the first celebrity to bring vintage clothing into the spotlight. In 2001 Julia Roberts, wore a vintage dress to the Oscars. Since then there has been a massive increase in interest for vintage clothes.

Julia Roberts Oscar 2001-Vintage Valentino

Womens vintage clothing is so much more than just used clothes. It’s clothing that had style back in its time and which continues to have style today even though the era when it was originally made is long gone. And don't forget that, there’s no easier way to go green than by buying vintage clothing.