In for a penny, in for a pound? Exploring mutual endorsement effects between celebrity CEOs and corporate brands
| Date | 12 March 2018 |
| Pages | 203-220 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-07-2016-1265 |
| Published date | 12 March 2018 |
| Author | Stefan Scheidt,Carsten Gelhard,Juliane Strotzer,Jörg Henseler |
| Subject Matter | Marketing,Product management,Brand management/equity |
In for a penny, in for a pound? Exploring mutual
endorsement effects between celebrity
CEOs and corporate brands
Stefan Scheidt and Carsten Gelhard
University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
Juliane Strotzer
University of Applied Sciences Moenchengladbach, Moenchengladbach, Germany, and
Jörg Henseler
Department of Design, Production and Management, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands and
Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal
Abstract
Purpose –While the branding of individuals has attracted increasing attention from practitioners in recent decades, understanding of personal
branding still remains limited, especially with regard to the branding of celebrity CEOs. To contributeto this debate, this paper aims to explore the co-
branding of celebrity CEOs and corporatebrands, integrating endorsementtheory and the concept of meaning transferat a level of brand attributes.
Design/methodology/approach –A between-subjects true experimental design was chosen for each of the two empirical studies with a total of
268 participants, using mock newspaper articles about a succession scenario at the CEO level of different companies. The study is designed to
analyse the meaning transfer from celebrity CEO to corporate brand and vice versa using 16 personality attributes.
Findings –This study gives empirical support for meaning transfer effects at the brand attribute level in both the celebrity-CEO-to-corporate-bra nd
and corporate-brand-to-celebrity-CEO direction, which confirms the applicability of the concept of brand endorsement to celebrity CEOs and the
mutuality in co-branding models. Furthermore, a more detailed and expansive perspective on the definition of endorsement is provided as well as
managerial guidance for building celebrity CEOs and corporate brands in consideration of meaning transfer effects.
Originality/value –This study is one of only few analysing the phenomenon of meaning transfer between brands that focus on non-evaluative
associations (i.e. personality attributes). It is unique in its scope, insofar as the partnering relationship betwee n celebrity CEOs and corporate brands
have not been analysed empirically from this perspective yet. It bridges the gap between application in practice and the academic foundations, and
it contributes to a broader understanding and definition of celebrity endorsement.
Keywords Corporate brand, Experiment, Meaning transfer, Personal branding, Celebrity endorsement, Celebrity CEO
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The branding of individuals is increasingly attracting attention
from professional practitioners (Peters, 1999;Montoya, 2004;
Rampersad, 2009). In particular, celebrities have become a
staple feature of mainstream media, as evidenced by recent
reports that the former Mayor of London, Boris Johnson,
“battles to turn brand Boris from “comedy act”to leading
man”(Rigby and Parker, 2015, p. 3). They have also become
an object of interdisciplinary interest, covering various
academic disciplines, such as sociology (Furedi, 2010;
Kurzman et al., 2007), psychology (Li, 2007;Moulard et al.,
2015), information technology (Alghawi et al., 2014;Elwell,
2014) and educationalscience (Edmiston, 2014).
Celebrities appear as a phenomenon of post-modernism in
which “we are witnessing the alteration of human roles due to
the multiplying spaces or to deconstructingstructures”(Rotaru
et al., 2010, p. 330). Consequently,there is no single consistent
definition of what a celebrity is, and, in addition, there remains
considerable room for enriching this definition, which this
study will contribute to. Contemporary celebrity status is not
limited to actors and actresses (e.g. Jennifer Aniston and
Johnny Depp) or singers (e.g. Bono and Alicia Keys). It has come
to cover a variety of other celebrity types (Moulard et al.,2015)
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on
Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/1061-0421.htm
Journal of Product & Brand Management
27/2 (2018) 203–220
Emerald Publishing Limited [ISSN 1061-0421]
[DOI 10.1108/JPBM-07-2016-1265]
© Stefan Scheidt, Carsten Gelhard, Juliane Strotzer and Jörg Henseler.
Published in Journal of Product & Brand Management. Published by
Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative
Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce,
distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both
commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to
the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be
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Received 10 July 2016
Revised 17 January 2017
2 May 2017
Accepted 12 May 2017
203
that also include artists (Fillis, 2015;Preece and Kerrigan, 2015),
politicians (Speed et al.,2015)and business personalities such a s
Carly Fiorina (Johnson, 2008)orRichardBranson(Rein et al.,
2006). In particular, celebrity CEOs are gaining increasing
attention in management and marketing research. While prior
research has consistently shown that certain certifications impact
celebrity CEOs’compensation positively (Malmendier and Tate,
2009;Wade et al.,2006)orthataCEO’sreputationservesasa
proxy for managerial ability (Graffinet al., 2012;Milbourn,
2003), previous research on the impact of celebrity CEO’son
company-related outcomes, such as stock returns, was
inconclusive. Whereas some researchers have found a positive
relationship between CEO reputation (Agarwal et al.,2011;
Milbourn, 2003) or award-winning CEOs (Wade et al., 2006)
and stock-based pay sensitivities, others allude to negative
corporate performance evaluation due to CEO’sreputation
(Fombrun, 1996;Rajgopal et al., 2006) and awards (Malmendier
and Tate, 2009). To contribute to this debate, the study at hand
examines the effects of a CEO’s personal brand on the
corporate’s brand, and vice versa.
Proposed meaning transfereffects between a CEO’s personal
brand and a corporate’s brand is conceptually grounded in the
concept of celebrity endorsement, defined as “an agreement
between an individual who enjoys public recognition (a
celebrity) and an entity(e.g. a brand) to use the celebrity for the
purpose of promoting the entity”(Bergkvist et al., 2016,
p. 644). While research in this area is mostly limited to athletes
and movie stars, a more precise understanding of the
endorsement roles of celebrity CEOs is crucial to explore the
nature and effects of a CEO’s personal brand. The major
mechanisms forming the basis of celebrity CEO endorsement
are the source credibility model (Ohanian, 1990;Silvera and
Austad, 2004), congruence theory (Friedman and Friedman,
1979;Mittelstaedt et al., 2000), co-branding (Fournier, 2010;
Parmentier and Fischer, 2012;Preece and Kerrigan, 2015)
with spill-over effects(Swaminathan et al., 2012) and the brand
personality (Aaker, 1997;Eisendand Stokburger-Sauer, 2013;
Lee, 2014). They coherently accentuate that the interaction
between brands can be characterized by a meaning transfer
(Bergkvist and Zhou, 2016). This central notion is further
supported by previous work of cultural theorists, such as
McCracken (1989), who proposed that it is the celebrity’s
cultural meaning and transfer of meaning that drives
endorsement outcomes.
While previous research has shown that meaning transfer
might indeed occur between celebrity CEOs and corporate
brands, empirical evidence is still scarce, and comparatively
little is known about how this process operates. Drawing on
existing literature on the humanizationof brands (Aaker, 1997;
Aggarwal and McGill, 2012), we refer to the concept of brand
personality as a theoretical lens for exploring the mechanismof
celebrity CEO endorsement. Brand personality“grasps the set
of human personality traits ascribed to a brand”(Eisend and
Stokburger-Sauer, 2013, p. 951) resulting when consumers
attribute human characteristics to nonhuman forms, such as
brands.
To empirically examine how a celebrity CEO transfers
meaning to a corporate brand and viceversa, the study at hand
uses a between-subjects true experiment using a set of 16
human personality attributes. The results provide new
theoretical insights into what specific attributes possess the
potential to turnCEOs into successful celebrity CEO endorsers
and, thus, into the meaning transfer process from celebrity
CEOs to corporate brands. Moreover, this study generates the
first empirical evidence that a corporate brand can serve as a
source for an endorsement to a CEO through personality
attributes. It additionally contributes to the literature on co-
branding insofar as the partnering relationship between
celebrity CEOs and corporate brands is two-sided and, thus,
calls for an analysis and development of co-branding models
that must not be restrictedto one direction between the partner
brands. Apart from providing insights into a more detailedand
expansive perspective on the definition of endorsement, the
study derives valuable managerial implications for building
celebrity CEOs and corporate brands in consideration of
meaning transfereffects.
Theoretical background and hypotheses
Celebritization of CEOs
The contemporary phenomenonof celebrity has seen countless
definitions from merely “being famous”(Epstein, 2005;
Furedi, 2010),“well-known for his well-knownness”(Boorstin,
2012;Epstein, 2005), “the few, knownby the many”(Banister
and Cocker, 2014), “resultof great good luck”(Milner,2010),
“celebrated not for doing,but for being”(Banister and Cocker,
2014)to“not born, but made”(Epstein, 2005). Similarly, the
notion of celebrity has been substituted by various other
abstract terms, including “heroes”,“stars”,“superstars”,
“television personalities”,“idols”or “icons”(Epstein, 2005;
Holmes and Redmond, 2006). A more integrated understanding
of celebrities implies the distinction between an ascribed status
based on bloodline or family relationships, an achieved celebrity
status that originates from talent or accomplishments and the
attributed celebrity (Rojek, 2012). The latter seems most in line
with the contemporary type of celebrity, manufactured and made
famous by media publicity alone (Furedi, 2010;Kerrigan et al.,
2011;Lindridge and Eagar, 2015;Milner, 2010;Rojek, 2014;
Turner, 2004).
The vast and complex celebrity industry contains celebrity-
creating institutions, from paparazzi to public relations experts
to reality television. In most cases, celebrities are exploited in
the promotion of some special interest, such as selling
commodities or influencing political decisions (Cashmore and
Parker, 2003;Milner,2010). While they may benefit from their
status, celebrities may also suffer from a temporary loss of
ownership of celebrity images and their shift from celebrity
producer to industry reproducer to the audience, and they
might become a virtual hostage to the brand recognized and
expected by the public (Lindridge and Eagar, 2015).This also
applies to ordinary people, as new media, and the Internet in
particular, supports them in shaping their own personal brand
(Khedher, 2014). Correspondingly, the phenomenon of
celebrities and the cultural personal branding movement are
closely linked together. Personal branding faces numerous
interpretations and definitions(Zarkada, 2012), emptying into
a triangular viewof:
what the branded individual brings in, such as values,
competencies, skills, abilities, personality (Gander, 2014;
Philbrick and Cleveland, 2015);
Exploring mutual endorsement effects
Stefan Scheidt et al.
Journal of Product & Brand Management
Volume 27 · Number 2 · 2018 · 203–220
204
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