Volume 32, Issue 2, June 2015, Pages 155–163
Full Length Article
The vampire effect: When do celebrity endorsers harm brand recall?
Abstract
Although
many brand managers favor the use of celebrities in advertisements,
others worry that celebrities overshadow the brand and thus impair brand
recall. Practitioners refer to this overshadowing as the vampire effect,
defined as a decrease in brand recall for an advertising stimulus that
features a celebrity endorser versus the same stimulus with an unknown
but equally attractive endorser. Because there is no agreement about
whether this overshadowing really exists, this research analyzes the
existence of the vampire effect and its moderators in a series of
experiments with a total of 4,970 respondents. The results provide
important insights into how to avoid the vampire effect by creating
appropriate conditions, such as high endorser–brand congruence or a
strong cognitive link between the celebrity and the brand. Surprisingly,
brand familiarity does not significantly moderate the effect.
Keywords
- Celebrity endorsement;
- Brand recall;
- Brand management;
- Advertising effectiveness
- Corresponding author. Tel.: + 49 40 42838 8714; fax: + 49 40 42838 8715.
- 1
- Tel.: + 49 40 42838 8714; fax: + 49 40 42838 8715.
- 2
- Tel.:
+ 45 3815 3852; fax: + 45 4185 2101.
Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
