Celebrity endorsement, motives and risks: case study of Skånemejerier

Abstract: Many of today's companies use celebrities in marketing campaigns in order to
on a more effective way, reach out with the message to the target group.
Those celebrities that are used as endorsers of the product/the service are
mostly movie stars or athletes. This type of marketing has become very
popular but also involves certain risks. This leads to our aim with this
thesis where through research we aim to gaining a deeper understanding of
the reasons for using celebrities as promotion tools in marketing and how
the risks that arise can be described and prevented.

The thesis has been limited to a case study of a specific Swedish company
within the dairy sector, Skånemejerier, that use celebrities in their
marketing. Telephone interviews with manager responsible for sponsoring at
Skånemejerier was the source of empirical data for this thesis. Collected
data are analyzed and conclusions are drawn as following:

Skånemejerier uses celebrities in their marketing in order to take benefits
from the athlete’s positive properties and to provide these along with the
product's properties. The choice of celebrities is based more on the
celebrities' trustworthiness rather than attractiveness. The biggest risk
with the use of celebrities in marketing are the risk of using illegal
substances. In order to avoid this risk and other risks, Skånemejerier is
very selective in its choice of celebrities to collaborate with. Another
important factor is that Skånemejerier only collaborates with celebrities
that already use products from the company before any cooperation is
initiated.