The Social Learning Theory, proposed by Albert Bandura in 1977, states that children acquire behavior through observing models in their social environment, encoding these behaviors, and later imitating them. In this paper, I will use the Social Learning Theory to examine the trend of companies' endorsement of athletes and celebrities. Further, I will analyze the effect of these celebrities' social media posts that promote the companies' products. This marketing technique has taken over in the advertising world and is proven to be quite successful in swaying the public's opinion of their product. A number of studies have shown this to be true. The effect of a celebrity is strong, and one that both advertisers and consumers should be aware of.
Everywhere you look in today's society, you see an advertisement. Often times, the advertisement contains an athlete, celebrity, or some other type of familiar face. Social media is taking over society, and advertisers are looking for clever and effective ways to market their product. Rather than simply post an ad or commercial on the company Twitter feed, businesses are paying celebrities to make their own posts about the product. Many fashion lines even pay the celebrities to wear the clothes or shoes and make a post about it. This is without a doubt an effective way for their product to be seen, but does it actually change the general public's opinion of the product? .
There is evidence that shows the answer is yes. In a study published in Global Media Journal, a group of researchers wrote a questionnaire that asked about advertisements and gave it out to a sample group of United States citizens (Ahmed, S., & Ashfaq, A., 2013). One of the factors the researchers were interested in was celebrity endorsement. However, one interesting detail in the results shows that it is not the celebrity's skills in persuasion that make the product sell. Rather, it is simply their fame and recognition that wins consumers' trust.