Effective Marketing Strategies for Conservation Efforts: Using Celebrities

One of the main issues with media and marketing, when it comes to renewable or green energy, are the tactics that should be used. I have recently conducted a study, which revolves around the effectiveness of celebrities in conservation marketing. Adding celebrities in the media when discussing environmentally efficient energy choices may increase the likelyhood that the population will pay attention, and possibly act on these advertisements. Effective marketing is primarily based on influencing people’s thoughts and views. Many organizations use celebrities in order to influence their audience, and create more publicity for their products or statements. Therefore, this study is aiming to show how using this marketing tactic will improve media and marketing engagement for cleaner types of energy. 

In order to understand the effectiveness of celebrities in marketing for clean energy, there has to be a baseline understanding of effectiveness in biodiversity-conservation marketing in general. The main purpose of my study is to understand if a population will be influenced on environmental decisions based on if they see a famous familiar face. It might be obvious that people will recognize a celebrity over just another face, and will choose the celebrity in a standard scenario. However, when having to choose between different options and remembering numerous campaigns, is having a famous individual going to matter? Will this cause the individual, and majority of individuals to remember information?

Marketing for clean energy is important for numerous reasons. The first being to change the behavior of the audience in order for people to be influenced to take a stand against harmful oil companies and fossil fuels, and to support environmental initiatives. Also, it is crucial for the public to be more aware and educated on what the harmful effects can lead to, and what they can do to help. This would help raise awareness and provide information about topics like nuclear power or the impact that fossil fuels have on the ecosystems. With celebrities being the face of new eco-friendly changes and clean energy, there could be a bigger change towards the direction of a “greener” world. 

In this experiment, there will be a population sample of thirty individuals that take a survey. The participants will be asked to recall information they learned, that is paired with either a celebrity or a random person, while not being allowed to go back to previous images. Based on their responses, determined by how closely related their answer is to the quote, this will gauge if the population will better pay attention if there is a famous person, and remember information that they learned. 

Every participant recognized the celebrity, and only ten participants recognized a well known conservationist. This part of the experiment gauges if a recognizable figure is going to affect the outcome of the participants memory. Some of the population sample did not remember any facts, which happened to be a couple of my roommates and an elder relative. The other participants could almost always recall the information from the celebrity. This could possibly show that if it is someone well known to an individual, attached to the fact, then the participant is more likely to remember the facts given. From these results we can infer that familiar faces may cause a trigger in memory, which is an important factor in marketing. This is important because as an initial experiment, this data is important to collect if there were going to be another test. With finding “triggers” for the participants, this can help create more effective ads based on what, or who, triggers the broadest audience. 

To conclude, using celebrities in marketing has become increasingly popular in recent decades, as the Earth is depleting of resources and marketing teams are trying to find effective options. There is a critical need for more in-depth research of how these campaigns are executed and how effective they truly are. The limited evaluation of campaigns involving celebrities has us question whether organizations are conducting valuable assessments of their impact, or if they are taking an educated guess on if they work. The use of celebrities as advocates for clean energy, through this study of effectiveness on conservation, remains a promising strategy, yet it requires a deeper comprehension of its impact and there needs to be a set and effective use of methodology found. From this experiment, celebrities and well known figures do have an influence on the way individuals process and remember information. Also, this may show correlation to not only memory but attention. With some changes in this experiment, the results could become closer to finding out what specific celebrities are effective, and how they can be used to be the most beneficial for cleaner energy. One of the problems that may need to be addressed with this experiment is if the celebrity may “take over” the brand. This may include the celebrity being the main focus, and not the conservation issue. In order to figure out if this is an issue, or how to find the correct balance, another experiment should be done based on this specific problem. 

A recommended change to this experiment would be to have multiple random people, celebrities, and environmental activists for a broader range. This would be effective to see if other celebrities, who are not as famous but still recognizable, have the same effect. Using one celebrity was the safest choice, to not confuse and overstimulate the participants. An additional recommendation for another experiment would be to see if celebrities or famous people affect certain types of ads and marketing based on the previously discussed experiment (Blake). Just like how mammals named after celebrities may not be effective, maybe using facts is not the best way to test this experiment. A recommendation could be a short clip or video instead of reading statements. Ferom this experiment, in order to influjence the public to start supporting cleaner energy, an effective way to hold attention and increase the recall of information would be to use celebrities.