Celebrity endorsement has shown to be an effective way enhancing brand-related attitudes, reinforcing behavioural intentions, and shaping brand perceptions. Indeed, companies devote a lot of resources on celebrity endorsement to exploit emotional bonds between consumers and brands in order to accomplish their desired brand image and increase brand awareness, differentiation, and brand loyalty. In short, brands that are endorsed by a favourite celebrity and influencer become more credible and trustworthy. This edited book examines this new era of marketing by focusing on the impact of employing celebrities, SMIs and virtual influencers to endorse the brand as a key advertising tactic. In particular, it focuses on the rise of social media usage and the corresponding changes in advertising strategies in the digital era. As well as exploring this rise of celebrity influencers and their value, the book also takes a critical lens, examining their roles in fuelling the growth of materialism, causing mental health issues among adolescents, and aiding the development of fast fashion. With this balanced and comprehensive approach, this book is an essential resource for anyone interested in the future of advertising.

​This book covers a very broad range of topics in marketing, communication, and tourism, focusing especially on new perspectives and technologies that promise to influence the future direction of marketing research and practice in a digital and innovational era. Among the areas covered are product and brand management, strategic marketing, B2B marketing and sales management, international marketing, business communication and advertising, digital and social marketing, tourism and hospitality marketing and management, destination branding and cultural management, and event marketing. The book comprises the proceedings of the International Conference on Strategic Innovative Marketing and Tourism (ICSIMAT) 2019, where researchers, academics, and government and industry practitioners from around the world came together to discuss best practices, the latest research, new paradigms, and advances in theory. It will be of interest to a wide audience, including members of the academic community, MSc and PhD students, and marketing and tourism professionals.

Social media influencers rule the world! Gone are the days of worshipping movie stars and athletes only for their talent. Everyday people are fast becoming the new celebrities and thus influencers for Millennials and Generation Z. In the past few years, social media influencers dominate pop culture and brands are eager to work with them to build their brands. From music to gaming; from fashion to sports; from wellness to lifestyle branding there are more than 50 million people calling themselves “creators” and many are influencers amassing a highly engaged community. For brands, what are the most effective ways to identify and cultivate influencers and support content creation? This book is for anyone who wants to understand the landscape of influencer marketing with an eye for collaborations between influencers and companies. Perfect for brand managers and agency professionals, up and coming influencers, and students wanting to enter this exciting field of marketing, this book combines practical advice and examples with an overview of the academic insights to date. Topics include creators and the creator economy, typology of influencers, how to work with them, considerations for campaign design and implementation. Celebrity 2.0: The Role of Social Media Influencer Marketing to Build Brands is a great primer to the influencer marketing ecosystem and the influencer marketing relationship framework to learn how content marketing, native advertising and content marketing all come together.

Many popular social media websites and apps have one thing in common: celebrities looking to be worshipped. These social influencers come from all walks of life, and cater to young demographics with content including comedy routines, make-up advice, product reviews, and music videos. Watched by millions of viewers worldwide, they create diversion, provide commentary, endorse brands, and sometimes inspire the wrath of governments. With the aid of media literacy terms and questions, readers will discover how this comprehensive collection of articles reveals the ins and outs of internet commerce and culture.

This book seeks to draw a comprehensive picture of influencer collaborations from a strategic communication perspective. The contributors tackle strategic influencer communication from multidisciplinary perspectives, from varying actor foci, and from different methodological frameworks and methods. Influencers cross traditional boundaries in many ways and oscillate between intimacy and publicity, authenticity and commercialization, ingratiation and critical distance. From a strategic communication perspective, this variability makes influencers hard to capture: organizations can cooperate with influencers to achieve both marketing and PR objectives. Influencers can act as cooperation partners, integrating commercial content into organic narratives, or as independent critics. Influencers also combine different roles that have traditionally been occupied by separate actors such as intermediary, content distributor, creative content producer, community manager, testimonial, strategic counsellor, and event host. The combination of these roles in just one actor opens new opportunities for strategic communication and can produce appreciated synergy effects. It is therefore hardly surprising that influencer collaborations have become a firmly established instrument in the toolbox of strategic communicators. The chapters in this book were originally published in the International Journal of Advertising and the International Journal of Strategic Communication.

The amount and range of brand related literature published in the last fifty years can be overwhelming for brand scholars. This Companion provides a uniquely comprehensive overview of contemporary issues in brand management research, and the challenges faced by brands and their managers. Original contributions from an international range of established and emerging scholars from Europe, US, Asia and Africa, provide a diverse range of insights on different areas of branding, reflecting the state of the art and insights into future challenges. Designed to provide not only a comprehensive overview, but also to stimulate new insights, this will be an essential resource for researchers, educators and advanced students in branding and brand management, consumer behaviour, marketing and advertising.