Bill Bernbach, an Advertising Creative Director

His agency's candid and honest style heralded in a newly found respect for the consumer, whereas earlier advertising reflected the formulaic, lab coat mentality of the 1950's. Bernbach comments, To keep your ads fresh you've got to keep yourself fresh. Live in the current idiom and you will create in it. If you follow and enjoy and are excited by the new trails in art, in writing, in industry, in personal relationships... whatever you do will naturally be of today. (Bill Bernbach) In 1949, Volkswagon claimed to have only sold 2 cars in America.

By the mid-1960's it was the car of choice for the counterculture, selling millions and embodying the ideals of a youth movement. The ads with their conversational and matter-of-fact copy resonated with a public who had grown weary of the hucksterism (sic) of Detroit automakers. The consumer had been duped into believing the pabulum it had been spoon-fed from Detroit was all that was on the menu. At the time, before the Creative Revolution, buying a Buick, Oldsmobile or Dodge meant buying into banality and built-in obsolescence.

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Car features noted in the late 1950's included such testosterone-charged rhetoric as "radical new Turbo-Thrust", "Quadra-Power Roadability" and "Finger-tip TorqueFlite" (Frank, pg. 61) The auto industry's battle cry and underlying dogma was "if new was good, then newer must be even better. " But with an ad that began, "This Volkswagon missed the boat. "(Sullivan, pg. 7), otherwise known as the "Lemon" ad, a new genre of communications was born. All of the sudden advertising had a soul.

And it was through the inherent humanity felt in the ads that made them so successful.

Capitalism became cool and the car that was once "known as nothing less than a Nazi product" (Frank, pg. 67) began to sell, and sell, and sell. Bernbach's recalcitrant creativity had launched a revolution, altering advertising forever. After he died in 1982, Harper's magazine told its readers he "probably had a greater impact on American culture than any of the distinguished writers and artists who have appeared in the pages of Harper's during the past 133 years" (The Advertising Century, Bernbach).

With memorable dialogue like "He likes it! Hey Mikey! " "Mamma Mia, that's a spicy meataball.(sic)", "Just Do it" and "Where's the Beef? " advertising has become a part of something more than just selling cereal, burgers and shoes. It has so entrenched our day-to-day lives it is almost impossible to separate the two, and perhaps, our culture at large. The Cult of Personality-Advertising and the Celebrity Endorsement Billions of dollars are spent on advertising because corporations believe in its power to generate demand and move product. Without a profitable return on investment (ROI), advertising campaigns are scraped faster than you can say "Rodney Allen Rippey".

Some of the most expensive ad campaigns to date involve the use of celebrity endorsements, promoting everything from Jell-O? to batteries. It is estimated that more than 20% of all TV commercials feature celebrities with advertisers paying more than $500 million per year for their services (Belch & Belch, pg. 232). So, how is this relevant to our culture at large? Because so much of what determines the success of a campaign relies on the cultural significance and consequence of using that particular celebrity at that particular juncture in our society (ergo, culture).

Celebrity endorsements seldom are random events. Celebrities must be considered for their congruity with the brand and personal characteristics. The attributes they bring to the table need to maximize communications not overshadow a product or service. The goal is to remember what they were selling, despite the belly baring and body slamming. And most importantly they need to be credible. If we are confident and believe a celebrity's claim about a product or service, then we are wont to buy into what they are selling.

Even stronger are celebrities with incredible mass appeal: Michael Jordan for Gatorade, Michael Jackson, Madonna and Brittany Spear for Pepsi, and most recently, Spiderman for everything from Cingular Wireless to PopTarts?. Yes, even fictional comic book heroes, taken directly out of the pages of pop culture are being signed and delivered via endorsement deals as sugar-coated as the cereal box that bears their likeness. The recent release of the new Spiderman movie had an opening weekend of over $114 million dollars, the largest to date.

It has since then gone on to gross over $200 million, faster than any other movie in history. One would be hard pressed to deny that the massive pre-release movie endorsements had nothing to do with the stellar ticket sales. Or course, using real celebrities can be a riskier proposition than using one that comes with a copyright. Lightening struck twice for Pepsi while trying to recoup and distance their brand identity from the explosive personality of Mike Tyson and religious controversy fueled by Madonna's "Like a Prayer" video.

Yet, the celebrity endorsement remains somewhat of an enigma of the marketing mix. In the Journal of Consumer Research, Grant McCracken outlined a new perspective on celebrity endorsement, titled, "Who is the Celebrity Endorser? Cultural Foundations of the Endorsement Process" (Belch & Belch, page 234). In it, he argues that the traditional precepts of source attractiveness and credibility are, by themselves, insufficient for effective communications.

To counter, he has developed a model of the celebrity endorsement process based on meaning transfer (Belch & Belch, page 234). The basis for his model stems from the culturally acquired meanings the celebrity brings to the endorsement process. These "meanings" include personal attributes such as age, class and gender as well contextual meanings that stem from an actor's latest role, to whom they are sleeping with. In his three-stage model, McCracken attempts to explain what can be a very complex and subjective process.

Working somewhat with a domino effect, the stages move through the following successive pattern: (Stage 1) The celebrity assumes the meanings they draw from their particular roles and lifestyles, whether they originate in film, TV, sports, or other visible venues; (Stage 2) Those meanings are then transferred to the products they are endorsing ; (Stage 3) The meanings the products have acquired are finally transferred on to the consumer. This last stage is probably the most difficult to interpret as there is no tangible transfer of meaning to measure and evaluate.