AN ANALYSIS OF PUBLIC PERCEPTION OF THE USE OF CELEBRITIES IN BILLBOARD ADVERTISING IN SOUTHERN NIGERIA

📄 Project Abstract

Recent trends in advertising have revealed that marketers and advertising agencies prefer the use of celebrities in the design of advert copy for Billboard advertisements (Mukherjee, 2009). This situation was informed by the fact that companies want to associate their products with a particular celebrity or group of celebrities, with the argument that the likeness associated with a celebrity can be transferred to the product or service (Mukherjee, 2009). Pingle (2004) has argued that it is hardly surprising that up to 20 percent of all advertising employs celebrities and that all evidence reinforces the fact that these campaigns are very effective in promoting the corporate, product and service brands with which they are aligned. Thus, studies have shown that such initiatives induce high profitability for companies and their brands (Kumar, 2012; Mukherjee, 2009; Pingle, 2004). No doubt, this underscores the place of celebrity advertising in marketing of products and services. Celebriti...