Social Awareness through Celebrity Endorsement - Indian Context

Abstract

The aim of any advertisement is to communicate information with a purpose to the present and prospective customers and drive them towards a specific product or service by showing its effectiveness and importance. Advertising messages are given about products, services and ideas to specific target audience. Processing of message conveyed by an advertisement is critical for successful advertising communication to the audience. The advertisements which are designed to target general audience for some social awareness campaign have some value added to it, if celebrities endorse the service. An important thing about this type of ad is that they need to be effective, they must be appealing to people's emotions and they must position strongly in their minds. This paper attempts to find out the attributes of celebrity endorsement in social awareness ad campaigns. Research and survey has proved that advertisement with celebs as brand ambassador has a greater appeal to the consumers, so social awareness or public service advertisements should not be an exception. Discussing the Indian scenario, majorly the government has taken up initiative for producing public service or awareness advertisement for fighting social issues. This work attempts to find out diverse aspects of celebrity endorsement in social awareness advertisement.