Celebrity endorsements: a case study of Axa and the Ludmila Engquist incident

Abstract: Nowadays many companies choose to use celebrities as endorsers for their advertising campaigns. Different types of celebrities are used as endorsers, but the two most common types are athletes and entertainers. The purpose of this thesis is to gain a better understanding of how celebrities are used as endorsers in advertising. To achieve this purpose three research questions are stated, which involve when companies use celebrities as endorsers, how companies select the endorser, and how companies handle the risks of using a celebrity as endorser. In order to achieve the purpose and to answer our research questions, a case study was conducted. The chosen company for this case study was Axa. Based on our purpose and research questions we investigate how Axa use celebrities to endorse their products and brand in general, but also look more deep into a specific incident, when former track & field athlete Ludmila Engquist was used as an endorser for the Axa brand. The overall conclusions of this study are that Axa uses a celebrity endorser when there is little product differentiation among competing brand. Furthermore, when Axa selects a celebrity to endorse their products, Axa begin this selection by stereotyping. Finally, two major risks can be found with the use of celebrity endorsers, negative publicity and financial risk.