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Celebrity TV ads don’t work to lure consumers

Celebrity sells. Or so we thought….

Celebrity sells. Or so we thought.

A study by AdvertisingAge Magazine, found that getting a celebrity endorsement is a big waste of money for most companies using TV ads to sell their products.

The magazine researched all of the nationally-televised ads for the first 11 months of 2010 and found that celebrity ads are mostly ineffective. Fewer than 12 percent of the celebrity ads surpassed a 10 percent sales lift, and one-fifth actually hurt the ad’s effectiveness, the study found.

According to AdvertisingAge:

Today’s consumer is informed, time-compressed, and difficult to impress, and they are only influenced by ads that are relevant and provide information. They don’t want to have products pushed at them, even from a celebrity. In fact, the data show that relevance and information attributes were key missing ingredients from most celebrity ads.

2010’s Worst Celebrity TV Ads — those that actually sunk the ad’s effectiveness — are as follows:

  1. Golf pro Tiger Woods for a Nike ad, called “Did you Learn Anything?”.

  1. Cyclist Lance Armstrong for a Radio Shack ad, called “No Emoticons”.

  1. ESPN host Kenny Mayne for a Gillette ad, called “Good Segment”.

  1. Race car driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. for a Nationwide Auto Insurance ad, called “Coverage at the Right Price”.

  1. Real estate magnate Donald Trump for a Macy’s ad, called “Making Timmy a Mogul”.

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