Social Media Reveals The True Value of a Celebrity Endorser

In a world governed by social media, where Justin Bieber is one of the most influential people on Twitter, what is the true value of a celebrity endorser? It would logically follow that celebrity endorsement is a sure fire way of generating social buzz around a brand. Right?

Brands have been dishing out big bucks for years to have these Hollywood stars and prominent figures front their brand, but how effective are celebrity endorsements really? Are brands really getting their money’s worth?

Always eager to take a sip from our Twitter firehose, we monitored mentions of celebrity endorsers alongside mentions of the brands they endorse. To show you who the most “bankable” celebrity endorsers are – we have ranked them according to the amount of social media buzz each celebrity generated for their brand.

We looked at celeb endorsements over the course of a 30 day period, and measured the percentage of social buzz generated by the celebrity for the brand. We took the number of mentions of the brand AND the celebrity in the same tweet, and divided by total number of mentions of the brand.

Here’s how the celebrity endorsers stacked up against one another.

So, what makes some of these celebrity endorsements more popular than others on social media? Taking a  look at the Twitter feeds of each celebrity, the top celebrity endorsers on our list are also the ones who are more personally involved and connected to the brands they’re fronting.

For example, Danica Patrick, who ranks #1 on our list, mentions GoDaddy frequently from her personal twitter handle and her Danica Racing brand handle.

However,  any mention of Nikon from Ashton Kutcher’s personal twitter handle is virtually non existent. It’s no surprise Ashton Kutcher comes in dead last on our ranking scale.

Another interesting finding was that more than half of the celebrities monitored produced less than 1% of all social media mentions about the brand they endorse – and the endorsements which generated the highest volume of buzz also generated the highest levels of negativity. So, perhaps spending millions on hiring a celebrity endorser may not be worth it after all?

We decided to dig a bit deeper into the world of brand representatives, and we looked at the social media buzz around band mascots – non-human, often cuddly cartoon-like characters, filling brands with emotions and personality.

We conducted the same experiment with brand mascots – measuring the percentage of social buzz generated by the brand mascot for the brand.

These brand mascots generated a lot more buzz around their brand than our celebrity endorsers. The Pilsbury Doughboy generated 22% buzz for Pillsbury! This is an impressive amount of buzz, considering it’s double the buzz of our #1 ranking celebrity endorser, Danica Patrick.

“As these brand mascots are basically the brand, they don’t have another job so all of their efforts can be spent promoting the brand and engaging with its online community,” said Loic Moisand, co-founder and CEO of Synthesio. “In traditional marketing, celebrity endorsements are extremely valuable, but for social media purposes, they don’t appear to be. Our research seems to confirm that mascots are the way to go online: they are popular, have no competing agendas and they work for free.”

Check out our Celebrity Endorsement and Brand Mascot Study in USA Today! Mascots top celebrities in social-media buzz