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What makes celebrity endorsements effective?
Much research has attempted to explain why celebrity endorsements work. (Photo by… [+] Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)
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Celebrity endorsements have been around for centuries, and more recently, famous personalities have made headlines by participating in promotions related to the crypto/blockchain space.
Tom Brady, Matt Damon and Larry David, for example, have all been featured in high-profile advertisements associated with platforms where investors can purchase digital currencies.
Why do celebrity endorsements like these work in the first place?
This very topic has proven intriguing to researchers working in a wide range of fields.
Neuroscientific, psychological, sociological and economic literature contain search results associated with this particular subject.
While there are many angles one can use to attempt to answer this question, this article uses a short list of potential explanations, looking specifically at it from the perspectives of neuroscience, cognitive psychology as well as as consumer psychology and behavior.
Familiar faces = trust
One explanation for the power of celebrity endorsement is that we are naturally wired to recognize faces.
Jeff Stibel, an entrepreneur, investor and former academic who has written extensively about the human brain, wrote a USA Today column describing this ability as integral to the survival of human beings when living in the wild.
If a tribe member could quickly identify another person’s face, they could quickly determine whether that person was an ally or a potential threat, he explained.
While it’s easy to see why this ability might prove useful, Stibel also noted that people aren’t very good at telling the difference between the friendly faces of people they know in real life and those who are on the television.
Professor Michael Platt, a neuroscientist who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania and is director of the Wharton Neuroscience Initiativeoffered his expert opinion on the subject.
When asked if humans have a natural ability to recognize faces, Platt confirmed that they do, stating the following in emailed comments:
“Yes, we are programmed to recognize faces. We also seem to be programmed to pay attention to physical attractiveness (as an indicator for pursuing mating opportunities) and power (which is always important to be aware of),” he added.
“I say hardwired because apes and humans are preferentially interested in these qualities and will pay for information about sexy or powerful individuals. This information is spontaneously signaled in regions of the brain that mediate attention, reward and decision-making, in both monkeys and humans. So it’s deeply ingrained,” Platt noted.
follow the leader
A article appearing in Knowledge at Wharton, an economics journal published by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, took a different approach to explaining the usefulness of celebrity endorsements, focusing on the human tendency to gravitate toward celebrity endorsements. authority when making decisions.
The aforementioned article, which cited an academic article titled “How Celebrity Status and Gaze Direction in Advertisements Drive Visual Attention to Shape Consumer Decisions,” stated that “humans and primates will follow the lead of high-status, high-prestige individuals in their group by aligning their gaze or copying their decisions. .”
“This behavior is observed in nature, when monkeys look to what a higher-status monkey is looking at in trees, or in the office, when employees model their work after that of the highest-rated employee,” notes the article.
“When the leader succeeds, others need less evidence to make the same choice.”
Platt offered additional context on the topic.
“The decision to buy something, like any decision, evolves through a process of accumulation of evidence in the brain over time. What we look at and what we pay attention to is amplified in this process, to the detriment of other information,” he said.
“Because we, and other primates, follow the lead of individuals of high status and prestige, this amplifies the common target of attention – in this case, a specific product, making it more likely to be remembered and more likely to be used. chosen,” Platt said.
The halo effect
The halo effect is a cognitive bias that causes positive impressions we have of one thing (e.g. a celebrity endorsing a product) to turn into favorable perceptions of another thing (regardless of advertising).
For example, if we view a specific celebrity as beautiful and magnetic, we may associate a facial cream she promotes with the same virtues.
Because we admire celebrities, the halo effect around them is even more intense, Richard Lehman, a professor, speaker and author who teaches behavioral finance at UC Berkeley Extensiondeclared via a LinkedIn direct message.
Lehman, who also teaches at both UCLA Extension And California Polytechnic State Universityis the founder and chief educator of Behavioral Finance.com.
While the halo effect surrounding celebrities can be powerful, the extent to which potential buyers perceive them to be aligned with the product or service they are promoting is crucial, noted Dr. Simon Moore, a chartered psychologist at consumption, in comments sent by email.
“The perception of why the celebrity ‘is there’ is a crucial factor in the impact it has on consumers’ attitudes toward the product/brand,” said Moore, who is currently chief psychologist and CEO of the London-based behavioral strategy agency. BI.
“Research we’ve done with our brand clients shows that the more audiences ‘see’ the celebrity’s personal values and needs match those of the brand, the more they believe the celebrity actually approves of them on a level psychological/ideological rather than on a psychological level. a level of monetary gain,” Moore said.
The psychologist provided additional context on the topic.
“The research results show that if consumers perceive that the celebrity was motivated to make the endorsement not only by money but also by the quality of the product, this has a significant positive effect on attitude towards the brand” , he noted.
Platt also spoke using the results of scientific experiments to illustrate the impact of the halo effect.
“We tested something like this in monkeys, building on our multiple studies showing that monkeys prioritize information about attractiveness and power,” he noted.
“We conducted an advertising study with monkeys in which we paired photos of sexy or powerful monkeys with specific brands (e.g. Pizza Hut, Toyota) and photos of unattractive or subordinate monkeys with other brands (e.g. example Dominos, Honda)”, explains the academic. continued.
“Later, we tested the monkeys’ preferences, for example between Pizza Hut and Dominos, or Toyota and Honda (there were many more brands). The monkeys consistently preferred (“purchased”) brands advertised by sexy or powerful monkeys,” Platt said.
“Thus, this halo effect appears to have deep evolutionary roots and is implemented in neural circuits that prioritize useful social information, which then biases circuits that gather evidence to support a decision,” he said. -he concluded.
Disclosure: I own Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Ether, EOS, and SOL.