Celebrity vs. Product: A Neuroscientific Approach to the Distractors in Food Advertising for Sustainable Marketing

Celebrity endorsement is nowadays a frequently used technique in marketing and advertising. On the one hand, celebrities have the ability to attract attention towards the advertising while on the other hand, their behavior is imitated by consumers, having a greater impact on buying decisions. One of the main challenges in advertising endorsed by celebrities is the overshadowing effect, by which consumers tend to watch the celebrity and not necessarily the advertised product. In three eye tracking experiments, we investigated the attention of consumers towards advertising with celebrities. The results showed that the celebrity was the eye-catcher of the advertising, being the first and longest object watched, but at the same time the product or the logo was also watched. The results also showed that the number of objects in advertising influenced the attention of the consumer. Across the three studies, we manipulated the number of objects and the results showed that in the case of information overload, the participants tended to watch the most familiar elements, which in our case were the celebrities. Therefore, the design and the number of objects in advertising endorsed by celebrities are also important in having a significant impact on the consumer.