Whether its Eli Manning advertising the Citizen Eco-Drive watch or Jennifer Love Hewitt advertising the Neutrogena face wash, we’ve all seen celebrities on commercials before. The public’s interest in celebrities usually keeps us watching the commercial when we probably wouldn’t have otherwise. Almost every company out there has a celebrity endorsing their products. The reason for continued use of celebrities in advertisements is simple: it tends to work. Advertisers’ first goal is to catch the viewer’s attention. Once the attention is caught, it’s to convince the viewer to purchase the product. By using celebrities in their ads, they’re pretty much halfway there.
A couple years ago, an ad was released on television and over the internet featuring over 20 well known celebrities. So you’re flipping through the channels and you notice these celebrities, maybe see a few of your favorites, and you wonder what it’s about. This ad was for the ONE Campaign, a global campaign to make poverty history. To view the ad, click here. We all know that poverty exists. We know the problems that exist in the world. Some of us even want to help, but don’t know what we can do. So for most people, there’s recognition of the world’s problems, but it’s just stored somewhere in the back of our mind. Watching this ad brings it all back to the forefront.
It’s sad to say that if these celebrities were not used in the ad, it would’ve attracted fewer viewers, but that’s the truth. Celebrities have the power to attract attention, and so here, they used their powers for good. Seeing all of these celebrities wearing the ONE bracelet together, including: Brad Pitt, Bono, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Al Pacino, Antonio Banderas, P. Diddy, Ellen DeGeneres, Orlando Bloom, Kate Bosworth, George Clooney, Jamie Foxx, and Tom Hanks, among several others, made it that much more attention grabbing. The ad did a wonderful job of getting people to notice, and an even better job of selling it.
Within weeks, several people went to the website and added their “voice” to the petition to use more government funding towards poverty and AIDS. It’s always wonderful when you know you’ve helped a cause that actually matters. For the ONE Campaign, you see the celebrities doing it, but you don’t have to be a celebrity to do it. In a way, it might make the public feel a connection with the celebrities, as they all work towards the same ends.
