Let the sports endorser speak: Combination of endorser type, color, and copy

Abstract

In sports advertising, selecting a sports star and a typical person as an endorser is an important issue. Based on construal level theory, this study intended to determine the appropriate combination of endorser type, ad colors, and copy style to increase audiences’ positive attitudes toward sports ads. Several experiments were performed to examine these research arguments. Experiment 1 demonstrated that people perceive distant and proximate social distances to sports stars and typical persons, respectively. Experiment 2 found that the participants perceived a positive attitude toward the ad through high process fluency when a sports star (a typical person) as the endorser used black-and-white imagery (color imagery) and an outcome simulation copy (a process simulation copy). Experiment 3 showed that using process simulation copies increased the effect of a typical person endorser who was perceived as similar to the participants on sports ads. Finally, the contributions and implications of the research findings are discussed.