Celebrities as influencers play an essential role in influencer marketing. Comparing to micro-influencers, they possess a larger fan base and stronger persuasive power as they are admired, trendy and recognisable. They can influence more people and facilitate powerful consumption on various social media platforms.
Due to celebrity endorsement, the target audience for brands that applies celebrity influencer tends to be hard-core fans, which contains strong brand loyalty and attachment.
This is the example of Brand Team Wang about how hard-core fans support Jackson Wang, as he is one of the most famous superstar in the world nowadays.
Celebrity influencer is able to create strong motivations for consumers from various perspectives :
- Entertainment. Entertaining themselves, as fans to support their favourite celebrities.
- Social connection. Sharing their experience with their friends with common interests.
- Information. Acknowledging the latest product information, as the latest products are usually prioritised to provide for celebrities to trial and promote.
Celebrity influencer usually occurs in fashion industry, as celebrities can simply post their photos of themselves with the brand clothes on their social media, which is also the most direct strategy in influencer marketing.
It is really interesting to find that Jackson Wang recently collaborated his own fashion brand Team Wang with a biscuit brand called Want Want in China.
The jointly-design biscuit box is sold at a price of ¥388 each, which is 10 times higher than the market price of a normal Want Want biscuit box. Surprisingly, the biscuit boxes were sold out within 1 minute once it released on the internet.
Is this type of product really worth to buy at such a high price?
Although celebrities can effectively facilitate the brand promotion, many of them try to drive up the product prices with their fame, which the price is extremely higher than its original value. The fact is a lot of celebrities are taking huge advantage of their fans in order to fulfil their desired income.
Therefore, it is very important for us, as consumers, to manage the motivations that come from the celebrity effects based on our needs, in order to consume products in a more rational and reasonable way.
Ryan's Experience in Digital Marketing 
4 replies on “Celebrity Influencers – They Are Taking Advantage of You”
Hi Zheng,
Providing Jackson Wang’s Want Want biscuit box as an example and highlighting its ridiculous pricing point compared to a regular one consolidated your statement of brands capitalising on celebrities’ expansive and strong fanbase loyalty, making it easier for the reader to comprehend the content.
But if you consider brand equity – the premium value a company has over its competitors – celebrities are also a brand valued by their fans. Thus, a celebrity-brand collaborated product would hold more meaning to these consumers than a regular or generic product, justifying brands for tagging a premium price for celebrity-brand collaborations. Furthermore, double-checking your grammar before publishing your blog is recommended to maintain professionalism and fluid reading.
Moreover, discussing the exploitative practices brands are undertaking when targeting celebrity fandoms was stimulating and insightful. I look forward to reading your next post.
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Oh..Jackson Wang! I think I might spend money for him, he‘s really handsome isn’t he, lol.
Seriously, excellent blog! Big improvement over your last blog. (No offense, the previous post was great too.)
I have seen a lot of key points of week3 lecture from your blog! More importantly, the overall expression is really clear and you have some perspectives that the audiences could engage with, I am kind of start thinking about them.
But if you could make a specific comparison between celebrity influencers and micro influencers, it would be more indicative of the stronger fan-base of celebrity influencers. With that comparison, the importance of celebrity influencers in influencer marketing is more prominent, right?
Again, Again, excellent blog! Worth time to read, nice job!
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Hey Ryan
I aggre with that celebrities can play a huge role in influencing a product or service. With their huge followers, celebrities can influence the use of a product or service without a doubt. Indeed, celebrity influencers motivate consumers by creating strong motivations premised on entertainment, information, and social connection. Based on the blog, celebrity influence can be viewed as a competitive marketing strategy by a brand.
However, I think you could have a look at a question like, as consumers, are we to believe each product or service is endorsed by a celebrity? Consumers need to consider that some celebrities are after money and some of the products or services that they endorse may be harmful to our health.
Overall, the article does well to highlight the significance of using celebrity influencers.
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I very much agree with your point of view, many brands tend to ignore the value of their own brands when hiring celebrities to market their brands, but I think this behavior can only guarantee sales for a period of time, which is more important than these. Is the brand should create its own brand value through the introduction of the function, or the brand story to enhance brand awareness and sales
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