Celebrity Endorsements

Advertisements can often be controversial, but I do despair at the amount of celebrity appearances and voiceovers in TV commercials, which must cost a fair whack, money probably better spent on the products themselves – or reducing their prices!

I’ve touched on this subject before, see good ads, but I’m becoming increasingly irritated by the cheesiness and pointlessness of these so-called celeb endorsements. Do I care what Cheryl is (supposedly) using on her hair, which yogurt Nicole Scherzinger (allegedly) prefers or that Victoria Wood appears to extol the virtues of a Dyson? Does it make me more likely to buy these products? Actually, no.

In fact the insincerity of some of the celebrity ads makes the products appear less credible to me. Their only use is to play a game of “Name That Celebrity” – can you recognise that famous voice in the background?

Random kittens in blog,
Much like random celebs in ads

I mean, do we really imagine that Peter André regularly pushes a trolley around his local branch of Iceland and that Mel Giedroyc really believes that “You’re better off at Asda”? The amount of different Asda ads featuring our Mel’s voice in the course of one week probably earns her enough to be far more extravagant with her weekly shop!

Personally, I’d prefer more ads featuring ‘real people’, which would be more cost-effective to make and more believable. It’s not really the TV advertising that encourages me to buy a product or visit a certain shop anyway, but introductory offers for products and loyalty incentives in the shops.

The odd advert can be quite entertaining, with some of the recent Christmas ones certainly worthy of a mention. I loved the Waitrose ad with its traumatic tale of the girl preparing the gingerbread stall and the John Lewis commercial with the lad and his penguins. But whilst the Sainsburys’ World War One ad was a poignant piece of film, I rather wish it hadn’t been an advert at all, just a short film to make us all think.

So does seeing or hearing a celebrity on a TV ad make you more likely to buy a product, or do you think there presence is just a total waste of money?