Celebrity Endorsement in Social Advertising

Advertising is the action of calling public attention to something, especially by paid announcements. We can see thousands of ads everywhere in public places or indoors in TV as well as online. The aim of the most of the ads is to persuade us to buy goods or services offered by the advertiser. Similarly, there are some public services ads that convey information and ads sponsored by charities that encourage donation. Some social advertisements are also made to give the viewer some serious thought about our social issues faced by our society. The social problems may be related to some kind of behavior like smoking, Pulse Polio, drugs, alcohol, domestic violence, pollution, family planning, care and concern for aged and disabled, national integration, domestic violence, rape, health and cleanliness, etc. Advertising promotes ideas of greater awareness of social norms and problems leads to better understanding and better solution. Social awareness can be defined as being aware of the problems that different societies and communities face on day to day basis and to be conscious of the difficulties and hardship of society. Now a day, Government and social organization are doing some mass media advertising campaign to inform, educate people in different areas of social interest. Mass media campaigns are widely used to expose high proportions of large populations to messages through routine uses of existing media, such as television, radio, and newspapers. Mass media campaigns can produce positive changes or prevent unfavorable changes in health-related across large populations. Besides all this, Celebrity endorsement is also widely used by government and organizations to promote awareness regarding the social issues faced in our society. But before we discussed about Celebrity Endorsement, Let‘s discuss about the Celebrity and their contribution towards the advertisements.

Using a celebrity for endorsing a brand has become a trend in India. But who is a celebrity? "A celebrity is a person who is well recognized by the people and has a good reputation and in the people's mind and in the society". Celebrities generally differ from the social norms and enjoy a high degree of public awareness and also have an overwhelming influence on a common

this is one of the reasons why the brand advertisers bank upon the stars for their endorsements. In recent years, we saw a burgeoning trend of celebrities being used by a number of brands in India. While selecting a celebrity as endorser, the company has to decide the promotional objective of the brand and how far the celebrity image matches with it. The selection is in fact a collaboration, from which both the company and the celebrity gains. The most important attribute for a celebrity endorser is the trustworthiness and likeability. A Brand ambassador is a person who is hired by an organization or company to represent a brand in a positive light and by doing so, they help to increase brand awareness and sales. The brand ambassador is meant to embody the corporate identity in appearance, demeanor, values and ethics. A Brand Ambassador would be one who is not only a spokesperson for the brand or is just appearing as a testimonial for the brand‘s benefits. She/he is an integral part of the brand persona and helps to build an emotional, which goes beyond just appearing in TV Commercial. The reason why celebrity endorsement is advantageous is because the advertisers' believe that brand images built through celebrities, achieve a higher degree of attention and recall for consumers, which will eventually lead to higher sales. A new trend has been started for some social or health awareness advertisement by using celebrities to get public attention which has reached to a new level. Now days, Celebrities are present in all social advertisements as they are easily recognizable by the public and the message delivered by him will reach public soon. Celebrity has become a medium to gather attention and mileage. While a lot of our Bollywood celebrities are doing well financially, only few realize their responsibility towards the society. There are lots of successful campaigns done by India‘s most famous celebrities which have a high impact on public. The most famous and recent example of successful social campaign in our country was done by our honorable Prime minister for Swachch Bharat Abhiyan. Shri Narendra Modi himself initiated the cleanliness by picking up the broom to clean the dirt, making this campaign a mass movement across the nation by giving a mantra that ―People should neither litter, nor let others litter.‖ This campaign received tremendous support from the people. Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao is a social campaign of the Government of India that aims to generate awareness and improve the efficiency of welfare services intended for girls. It aims to address the Pulse Polio is an immunization campaign established by the government of India in 1995-96 to eradicate poliomyelitis (polio) in India by vaccinating all children under the age of five years against polio virus. The 69 years old actor Amitabh Bachchan was appointed as the brand ambassador for the polio eradication campaign. Aamir Khan was appointed a UNICEF National Ambassador in November 2011 for the campaign called ―Malnutrition Quit India‖ or ‗Kuposhan Bharat Chhodo‘ was a multimedia campaign, where he educates masses about how malnutrition is a silent destroyer, and how it negatively impacts the lives of children, who are indeed the future of our country. This campaign was seen and heard in over 18 languages, all across the country. There are some more famous examples of social awareness campaigns in our country like Eye donation, HIV Aids, Violence against women, Vogue Empower and so on.

Every day public is exposed to thousands of advertisements and this will hamper companies to create a unique position and receive attention from viewers. Celebrity endorsement has been applied for many years. The strategy of using celebrities to endorse public awareness campaigns has been steadily increasing over the last few years. In the 1980s, ads primarily featured TV and movie stars, while today, cricketers, Bollywood actors and actresses and TV stars dominate the celebrity endorsement market in India. Endorsement of celebrities is not likely to change because people and western culture have been obsessed with celebrities. This emanates from the fact that media overloads society with news and Illustrations about celebrities and gives them an entertainment function. Using celebrities always help to catch the attention of public towards their awareness message. One of the most trusted stars of our country such as Aamir Khan or Amitabh Bachchan, who helps to aware people about social issues, these celebrities can influence the public emotions perfectly. Our impulse behaviors are usually the ones that get us to pay attention towards the messages or information they want to deliver. Consumer behavior scholars and advertising practitioners are devoting increased attention to promotional endorsements. Celebrity endorsers are regularly used to promote an endless social advertising. A number of factors have been mentioned as important in using endorsers, such as

products endorsed by celebrities, a natural outcome is that some celebrities endorse a number of social ads. Based upon the cognitive consistency analysis, an endorser will be maximally effective when both a strong sentiment relationship exists between the consumer and the endorser, and a strong unified relationship exists between the endorser and the message. With the development of strong positive sentiment and unit relations, the consistency forces are hypothesized to cause the consumer to cognitively reorganize the weaker consumer-product (C-P) relation so as to perceive the product more favorably (Abelson and Rosenberg 1958). Today, the major goal of advertising strategy is to influence the viewers, who are becoming increasingly educated, sophisticated and selective. The use of celebrity endorsement, advertising has become an ever-present feature in modern advertising. Celebrity endorsement today is the ultimate and ideal promotional strategy for marketers as the people get attracted towards those messages that reflect their inner lives, values, beliefs and most importantly their desires. But when a celebrity is attached to the brand, the product and the company get immediate recognition, charisma, and charm. Celebrity endorsement is more effective than non-celebrity endorsement. For a successful campaign the prerequisite is that the idea behind the campaign should be a unique one and there should be a match between the celebrity and the message conveyed. Celebrities will generate attention, recall and positive attitudes towards advertising only if there is lucid fit between the celebrity and the brand. But the celebrity endorsement is ineffective when it comes to the purchase intentions and actual sales because it is the core product and quality of the product that the consumers consider while purchasing the product.

In today‘s time period, advertising plays a vital role in coordinating viewer‘s attention. Advertisements becomes pertinent for an organization to induct all possible measures to influence, motivate and inculcate a desire in viewer to listen and watch the message through an effective advertising campaign. Advertisers earlier used the common man as a model in advertising to promote their product. But in the beginning of 1980‘s, celebrity starts to capture the advertising business with their glitter and fame, and up to an extent they were successfully doing that. communities around you. Social Advertising identified the social issues in our society and then an advertising campaign is to solve the problems. Using a celebrity for endorsing a brand has become a trend in India. The Government and social organization endorse the celebrity in social advertising to inform, educate people in different areas of social interest all around the world. The Celebrity endorsement creates a very favorable impact on the viewers and it creates a connection which forces a viewer to pay attention to the message. The use of celebrity for endorsement creates a very favorable impact on the viewer and it also creates a connection which forces a viewer to pay attention to the social ads. As the research has demonstrated about advertisers who pour crore of rupees every year into celebrity advertising in India whether it is a product ad or social ads. But there are some celebrity also who work for free in social advertisements like Amitabh Bachchan. While endorsing a social advertising, A Celebrity should fully involve in the solution of any social issues or to aware the target audience about the problem in our society. Some great personalities did Social Awareness Campaigns in our country and most of them got success also. They were succeeded not only to aware people about the social issues faced by our society in India, but they also encourage other people to participate and stand out to solve the issues. By all counts and proven results, it is no wonder that Celebrity Endorsement is a powerful tool and the main important factor is that how to utilize it. Endorsing a celebrity can add extra charm and impact on the social message. It is necessary for marketer to target the celebrity who will appeal in his viewers. But the celebrity should be used effectively who can easily conveyed people about the social messages in their social ad campaigns.

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