By Jim Edwards
A fascinating study -- with a questionable methodology -- of the effectiveness of celebrities in commercials finds that they're almost always a waste of money.
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The Best and Worst Celebrities to Feature in Your Ads
The Best and Worst Celebrities to Feature in Your Ads
The Best Celebrities to Have in Your Advertising
Some stars do "lift" a brand in the estimations of viewers -- Oprah Winfrey is essentially brand magic personified, if the survey is to be believed. But on average, ads with celebrities in them do less well with viewers than those without.
- Click the chart at right for an easier-to-read version
Peyton Manning -- who has advertised Sony, MasterCard, Reebok, Wheaties, Gatorade and Oreos -- is a good example. His presence is mostly a gamble for advertisers. Four of his ads in the survey saw a small lift above the average with viewers, but three saw a reduction in effectiveness, the survey said.
The worst celebrity to have in a commercial is Tiger Woods, according to Peter Daboll, CEO of Ace Metrix, the ad tracking firm that performed the study. Woods lowers a brand's effectiveness with viewers by 30 percent.
That result stands in stark contrast with another academic survey of the Woods effect by Carnegie Mellon University. That study found that, overall, Nike gained or kept sales it would not otherwise have earned both by signing Woods in the first place and by sticking with him when other advertisers abandoned him during his sex scandal.
The contradictory results point out a methodological problem with Ace Metrix's survey: It relies on:
... a standardized survey instrument and proprietary scoring algorithm Ace Metrix has scored more than 9,000 television advertisements.
That's fine as far as it goes, but it's basically polling viewers for their opinions. It's not actually looking at sales, nor is it looking at the add-on PR value of having Snookie crack a nut in a sun bed for Wonderful Pistachios (she lowered an ad's presence by 15 percent, Ace reckons). In theory, customers can be both cheesed off by an ad and still buy the product simply because it's the one they saw advertised.
Nitpicking aside, the survey features a set of ego-bruising lists of the best and worst celebrities to have in your ads.
Oprah Winfrey's ads -- many of which were public service announcements sponsored by Liberty Mutual and Progressive against texting while driving -- were the best. They didn't pitch a product, either.
But you didn't need to get Oprah on board to have a successful ad. Check out Ed Burns for iShares, in which he swallows a pill camera to show off hi-tech investment opportunities. Burns is undoubtedly cheaper than Oprah.
Next page: The worst celebrities in advertising
The Best and Worst Celebrities to Feature in Your Ads
The Worst Celebrities to Have in Your Advertising
Everyone has seen Tiger Woods' awful "did you learn anything?" ad, in which he stares at the camera while listening to the voice of his dead father addressing him about his infidelities.
- Click the chart at right for an easier-to-read version
But almost as bad was Lance Armstrong for Radio Shack and Dale Earnhardt Jr. for Nationwide Auto Insurance:
Armstrong's "emoticons" ad performs poorly because it's not completely clear what he's advertising -- Radio Shack's products aren't showcased, according to Ace Metrix.
And then there's the Peyton Manning problem....
Next page: What's wrong with Peyton Manning?
The Best and Worst Celebrities to Feature in Your Ads
The Peyton Manning Problem ...
Peyton Manning, like Brooke Shields, will advertise just about anything.
- Click the chart at right for an easier-to-read version
Yet he's not particularly effective as a pitchman. He did good work for Sony and MasterCard yet flunked with Oreo cookies and Wheaties. Here's his MasterCard ad:
The main problem with celebrity ads is that the script works so hard to associate the famous person with a previously unrelated product -- Conan O'Bien with American Express or P. Diddy with Ciroc vodka -- that viewers are puzzled as to what the ad was supposed to be about. Ace Metrix study says:
Conan O'Brien's ad for American Express garnered remarks like "What in the world was it about in the first place? I don't have a clue." Likewise, Diddy's Change Your Name ad for Ciroc vodka never discussed the actual product in terms of taste, comparison to competitors, or cost. One respondent observed "It didn't really tell me about the product. If it did it wasn't that clear."