The use of celebrities in advertising: abroad and in lithuania

The object of this work is celebrity advertising, the aim of this work is to find out the effectiveness of celebrities, who endorse brands – their influence not only on brands, but on consumers’ behaviour as well. In order to achieve a purpose of Master thesis, the main tasks are set as follows: 1. To define the meaning of celebrity. 2. To do the theoretical analysis of the use of celebrities in advertising. 3. To reveal the factors, which influence celebrity advertising. 4. To analyse the tendencies of celebrity endorsements in foreign countries. 5. To find out, how the use of celebrities in advertising of a particular brand in Lithuania influences sales and see its influence on memorizing the brand. In order to define the effectiveness of advertising, the qualitative interview with experts was chosen. When using this research method, it was concluded that one of the main factors of successful celebrity endorsement campaigns is celebrity-product-target audience congruency. The effectiveness of adverts was also tried and tested while doing an experiment. Four different adverts were measured, which later were evaluated under two alternative routes to user persuasion: peripheral (the creative executorial aspects of the advertising are dominant) and central (the focus is on the product/ brand and message). The results not only showed that an advert, where the product was endorsed by celebrity, is more effective than a simple advertising, but also revealed the importance of cultural factor in celebrity advertisings. On purpose to attract customers and to convince them that the product advertised is namely what they need, it is relevant for advert creators to choose the most suitable celebrity for advertising. Therefore, the results gained could be the beginning of further research, so that the effectiveness of celebrity advertising would be analyzed in more detail. Master thesis can also be useful to advertising creators and companies, which are ready to advertise themselves