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Celebrity Endorsements on the Web

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[ dog barks ]

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How are celebrities used in advertising?

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The main question here is

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why do celebrities work as --

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Why does it work to have celebrities endorse your product?

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And the answer really is just that

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these are people who we want to be like.

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You know, we talked before.

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Everyone wants to be famous.

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Hey, this person's famous and they eat McDonald's cheeseburgers.

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Maybe if I eat McDonald's cheeseburgers,

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I'll be famous, too.

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And we don't actually think that,

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but that's how it works.

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We're not actually sitting there thinking,

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"Maybe if I went and got a McDonald's cheeseburger,

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I, too, would be an NBA professional."

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That's not how we're thinking.

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But that's basically what's at work in our brains.

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We know it works.

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When I think of Nikes, I think of Michael Jordan.

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If you were to say, "Picture someone in Nikes.",

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I'd picture Michael Jordan in Nikes.

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That's because he endorsed Nike.

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- He was Nike. He is Nike. - Yeah.

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And even if I haven't seen Michael Jordan

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in a Nike ad in probably over a decade,

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I still think of that. So we know it works.

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But it's really just about

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that it is a figure we recognize

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and kind of look up to and kind of wanna be.

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But, yeah, we do have this question of,

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"Does the person actually use the product?"

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We know they're being paid -- I think Beyonce was paid like

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50 million dollars or something to endorse some product.

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We know they are getting an insane amount of money to do this.

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Do we actually think that they believe in it?

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And that comes back to that question,

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"Do Angelina and Brad actually believe in their causes?"

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Probably. Yes. They've adopted eight children or however many.

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Does some, you know, Paris Hilton? No.

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You know, we don't...

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- Yeah, does Michael Phelps really love Subway sandwiches? - Right!

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There we go, exactly.

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But that said,

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there's a pressure put on celebrities in that

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fame is typically pretty fleeting.

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The attitude from the celebrities' thing is,

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"Hey, the money is available now."

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They've got agents and managers pushing them.

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And the celebrities are typically good at swimming a 200 meter butterfly,

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not necessarily making articulated financial decisions.

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So it's understandable

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that they would jump on whatever product it is and,

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"Oh, you want me to market diet cherry soda?

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I'll start drinking it and then I'll say I drink diet cherry soda or whatever it is."

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We talked about how these guys in The Big Bang Theory

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are making a million dollars an episode,

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22 million dollars a year.

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These celebrities might make that much

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- for half a day of their time. - Exactly.

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Penny is advertising like 18 different things

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that I've been seeing on TV.

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And that money is magnitudes more

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than what they make from the actual television show.

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Yeah, because it takes a week or so

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to tape an episode of Big Bang Theory.

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Again, it takes probably a half a day at most

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to tape a ten-second spot, so...

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Exactly. So celebrities are used in advertising

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because they're this almost God-like figure.

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When they drink the same soda we drink,

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we're touching their God-like status in some form,

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and so we wanna buy more of the product.

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Exactly.

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[ pen writing ]

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How are celebrities used in advertising?

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All right, hope that worked.

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