Consumer Trust Levels In Celebrity Brand Image During Crisis: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

Celebrity Endorsers are everywhere. Covert product placements nestled into reality tv programmes, adorning billboards as you drive to work. Peppered throughout your social media feed, promoting everything from make-up to pet food. Celebrity Endorsers particularly thrive on social media, and are a symptom of the increasingly digital age we live in. They rely on strong brand trust between their audience and themselves in order to convert an endorsement into a sale. This brand trust is critical to their success. And it is delicate; any hits to this brand trust can result in loss of sales, loss of market share and bad publicity.

How does the variable of crisis affect this brand trust? How did Covid-19 impact the public’s trust in Celebrity brands? This study aims to answer these questions.

Three millennial, female celebrities, each from diverse religions, ethnicities and business verticals were selected for this study: Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian and Ivanka Trump. Data was collected from six months of their social media - namely Instagram - activity; three months pre Covid-19 and three months during Covid-19. An innovative new brand trust model, ‘The Four Pillars of Celebrity Endorsements’ was layered against the findings to understand what affects brand trust in Celebrity Endorsers and why. Thematic analysis methods were employed to disseminate the data into comprehensive insights and answers to the research question.

The findings prove the fragility of brand trust in a Celebrity Endorser, the peripheral variables that significant impact it, and offers practical recommendations for brands and celebrities alike.