Frontiers of Branding

Dr. Mirjam Hauser

Student name: Le Hoang Viet Anh

Student ID: 20679923
Applied Project
Session 6
Secondary Brand Associations: Good & Bad of Celebrity Endorsements

There were many different methods for leveraging secondary brand associations
to link your brand’s image to another entity’s image to strengthen your brand awareness
and broaden your audience reach. One of the most interesting methods is to have
celebrity endorsements, where your brand partners with celebrities for them to promote
and popularize your products in different platforms (both online and offline) using their
image and fanbase. Celebrity endorsements comes with many advantages, such as the
ability to build a strong brand equity, the image of the celebrities that help people to
remember your ads better, the belief that using your product help to contribute into the
superstar status of the celebrities and the attraction of loyal fanbase that helps increase
market share. However, there are risks of overspending for the endorsements (to avoid
the celebrities advertise for competitors), the brands being overshadowed by celebrities
(when the celebrities are too popular and advertise for many different products, people
might only care about the celebrities but not the products they are using) and the bad
images that could happen when celebrities make mistakes – since they are still human
after all.
Many companies operated in Vietnamese market also use celebrity endorsements
to get their products closer to the consumers. Shopee is one of the biggest players in the
celebrity endorsements as they have partnered with many celebrities in different aspects
(sports, music, comedy, etc.).
Frontiers of Branding
Dr. Mirjam Hauser

Image 1: Comedian Hoài Linh

Image 2: Singer Bảo Anh and Goalkeeper Bùi Tiến Dũng

Frontiers of Branding
Dr. Mirjam Hauser

Image 3: Singer Sơn Tùng M-TP

These partnerships have been very successful since the celebrities are all
superstars in Vietnam, which helps the image of Shopee being more and more popular
in Vietnam e-commerce market. This was show by Shopee being ranked number one E-
Commerce player (by iprice.vn) for Q4 2021.
Frontiers of Branding
Dr. Mirjam Hauser

https://iprice.vn/insights/mapofecommerce/en/
However, Shopee did have to face the risk of celebrities making mistakes that had
some damages into their reputation. In May 2021, comedian Hoài Linh was involved in a
big scandal related to charity work – he had been criticized by a CEO due to the failure
of transfer donations to the flood victims in the Centre of Vietnam (the serious flood
occurred in October 2020). It created many backlashes from consumers – stating that
they wouldn’t use Shopee again unless Hoài Linh is removed from being the brand
ambassador. In order to please both its current customers and the public at that moment,
Shopee had immediately decided to remove all images and ads contains Hoài Linh from
all of their platforms. The move had been applause and encouraged by consumers, which
even increased their popularity within the audience.
Frontiers of Branding
Dr. Mirjam Hauser

https://vietnamnet.vn/en/entertainment-travel/popular-comedian-faces-charity-fund-
disbursement-criticism-740252.html
https://marketingreview.vn/den-nhu-shopee-bat-tay-kol-nao-cung-vuong-khung-hoang-
truyen-thong.html
https://thanhnien.vn/shopee-dong-loat-go-toan-bo-hinh-anh-hoai-linh-post1071678.html
This example of Shopee’s celebrity endorsements clearly demonstrates both the
advantages and risks of having celebrity endorsements as a secondary brand
association. Their immediate action can also be used as a case study for other brands to
understand about handling celebrities’ mistakes that might damage brand reputation.