Product endorsement on Slovak TV: Generation Y’s recall of celebrity endorsements and brands

ABSTRACT

Theory and practice supports the use of celebrity marketing, as celebrity endorsements can generate significant publicity and attention. In this way, communication and marketing goals are met for a variety of businesses. In fact, studies investigating celebrity marketing find that in the USA and Great Britain, 20–25% of TV commercials use celebrities. However, there is a dearth of research stemming for some other countries such as Slovakia on this topic. Therefore, this study specifically investigated what the younger range of Generation Y (i.e. Millenniums) could recall about celebrity endorsements, and specifically if they could connect the celebrity endorser to the product line. We found a rather high level of spontaneous recall for celebrity endorsers by the respondents. The dominant representation was found in four categories: Sports (29%), Television Personalities (25%), Actors (19%), and Musicians (18%). Combining the level of recall of celebrity endorsers with the professional background of the celebrity, and the product we were able to quantify the recalled celebrity endorsers on a continuum. We found that generally international celebrities scored higher on recall levels than Slovakian.

KEYWORDS:

• Celebrity endorsement
• source credibility
• Generation Y
• homogenous
• convenience sampling
• advertising effectiveness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency under Grant APVV-18-0257 Incubator of Multimedia Digital Production - ReciprocalTransfer of Science, Art and Creative Industries.

Notes on contributors

Peter Mikuláš

Peter Mikuláš, Ph.D., is an expert in media communication theory and media analysis. In his theoretical work and research, he deals with the marketing aspects of celebrity culture, especially with celebrity endorsement. Another part of his research field deals with the creation of new genres in audiovisual media. He also focuses on new media and online social networking and the use of mobile technologies in social networks.

Amiee Shelton

Amiee Shelton, Ph.D., APR, is an energetic, dynamic and professional speaker. She has extensive experience in the media industry first as a producer, reporter and news room manager in the top media companies in the United States; and then as an academic studying the media industries. She is well versed to speak about media trends, media coverage, and media theory. She has significant experience in media relations, entertainment public relations and media, lifestyle media trends and designing and analysing media narratives. As a Fulbright Scholar, Dr Shelton is widely travelled and culturally aware and sensitive. She has spoken or had papers presented at several conferences in the Visegrad countries.