BUILDING BRAND AWARENESS: THE ROLE OF CELEBRITY ENDORSEMENT IN ADVERTISEMENTS.

Abstract

Advertisers believe celebrity endorsement is an effective marketing tool for building brand recall and recognition most importantly, brandawareness. The article aims at identifying how celebrity endorsement in advertisement creates brand awareness. A qualitative in-depth interview is conducted among 30 respondents (15 from London, UK and 15 from Chittagong, Bangladesh) aged 18- 35 years or more on 4 selected TV advertisements (2 advertisements from UK, 2 advertisements from Bangladesh) to judge consumers’ responses towards celebrity endorsement in advertisement and how it stimulates brand awareness. Thematic analysis has been used for analysing data. Findings indicate though respondents can recall the advertisement which uses attractive, trustworthy, high profile celebrity, it will not be an effective marketing tool in the mature and saturated market like UK. The in-depth interview shown celebrity endorsement within the advertisement is a highly influential emotional driver in Bangladesh whereas UK respondents are indifferent to celebrity endorsement. To increase brand awareness, advertisers in Bangladesh should engage high-profile celebrity with positive image, credibility, trustworthiness who matches appropriately with the brand endorsed. Contrarily, advertisers in UK should combine information with other emotional appeal and drivers in advertisement to provide unique selling proposition and enhance brand awareness. It is expected that this cross-country research will solve existing literature gap and provide a comparative review on consumers’ responses towards celebrity endorsement used in advertising to stimulate brand awareness in developed and developing country perspective