Introduction: What is the purpose of your essay and how do you mean to discuss it? Define the words used in the question.
The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate my understanding of how celebrity endorsements may offer an immediate shortcut to a branding message. In the essay I will look at examples of celebrity endorsements and analyse them in order to decipher their symbolic meaning. I will look at models of elaboration, magazine covers, Rojek’s reasons for rise in celebrity culture and case studies of specific celebrities and the products they endorse. I will explore how companies believing that sex sells (such as Calvin Klein and Agent Provocateur) will use images of Kate Moss rather than Emma Watson and how this could be down to Kate Moss’ bad girl image. I will also look at how some companies may chose Emma Watson for her good girl image in order to provide a message about their brand for example Burberry.
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I will look at how the image a celebrity has can affect the image of a product and how celebrity scandals can affect these endorsements and the public’s image of the products. I will also look into the history of consumerism and photography in order to understand why celebrity culture is as big as it is today.
The Oxford Popular Dictionary defines celebrity as simply a ‘Famous person’. Fred Allen was once quoted as saying that ‘A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognised’ and worldiq.com describes celebrity in the following way: ‘‘A celebrity is a person who is widely recognized in a society. Fame is prerequisite for celebrity status but not always sufficient. For example, high profile criminals are famous, but not always celebrities. Traditionally