Celebrity Vs Influencer: Which one should a company pick?

Celebrity Vs Influencer: Which one should a company pick?


Companies are, for few years, using digital influencers to run their advertising campaigns. This usage is changing years of habits.


Endorsement started in the 18th century with royal celebrities used to promote porcelain in UK. At the beginning of 20h century first athletes were used to promote cigarettes brands. After world war II and the emerging of television, movie stars were used to promote all kind of goods. Recently brands developed new product lines having the name of stars. The model of endorsement has evolved in many ways and the revenues of the celebrities as well. The 21st century has seen digitalisation appear and social media being a critical communication channel for companies. This placed high pressure on traditional brand ambassadors who had to change their marketing habits as well and compete with new actors: digital influencers.


A digital influencer is a person who is gathering an audience and who can influence its actions and opinions. The influencer is gathering by the content he/she provides, and the communication he/she makes through social networks and medias. A celebrity is mainly a brand which convey the image of success at different degrees.


In UK, companies are spending more on Digital influencers than on celebrities for endorsement and commercial opportunities in 2016 and almost 61% of companies have worked with an influencer and 57% with a celebrity there. So why companies are trusting one group more to conduct advertising campaigns?


First, data provided by digital resources can be used to measure efficiency of digital influencers.
For example, we know that today a digital influencer will give back more than 17 times the money spent on him/her.


Secondly, companies can target better thanks to a more precise audience personality and identity enabling with influencers. 85% of companies are looking for this feature when choosing a person to work with. For almost half of the companies answering the surveys, it is very hard to define the audience of a celebrity. This could have impacted the revenues of celebrities from advertising which has decreased by more than 30% between 2016 and 2017.

Then 75% of the influencers revenues are generated by female influencers. Companies do not hesitate to create specialized advertising campaign for one influencer, and use more and more a new third group which is emerging: the niche influencers.


In addition to the effectiveness of the targeting, influencers are costing way less than celebrities in average. The influencer has become a very competitive product, so we can now question on the veracity of the messages it conveys to its audience. Some famous digital leaders have seen their audience fall, and mass bashing, after conducting too repetitive and guessable endorsements. Some influencers started to question and bash companies. Digital media users must be very careful on the persons they follow and develop a