Celebrity Endorsement Strategy Uses and Popular Culture: ‘A Fidgety Coca-Cola’ Ad

Abstract

The use of celebrity endorsement strategy in ads brings attributes like admiration, advertising appeals, favorable attitudes, famousness, memorability, popularity, attractiveness, likability, and sympathy. Furthermore, celebrity endorsement enables an increase in sales as well as market share. Popular culture, on the other hand, is a set of values and practices that are adapted by subcultures through globalization, media and consumption culture, which become widespread as a mechanism aiming to oppose the system while integrating with it. In this research ‘A Fidgety Coca-Cola’ advertisement, in which the global brand uses the celebrity endorsement strategy is analyzed using the descriptive content analysis method according to Hofstede’s Cultural Onion Model and Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory. The research aims to find out the uses of celebrity endorsement strategy as well as the role of celebrity endorsement strategy in producing hybrid popular codes. The celebrity endorsement strategy uses in the ad is for the means of producing popular culture codes like following trends, being trendy, bringing trendiness to the product as well as embracing celebrity culture and consumption culture. The celebrity endorsement strategy is used in the ad to internalize globalized American cultural value dimensions through proposing trendy self-images and symbolic consumption.