This paper examines the effects of narrowed social distance with celebrity endorsers (i.e., via close relationship categories) and their origin (i.e., local or international) on consumer evaluations towards their endorsed advertisements. It is proposed that employing a relational approach in celebrity endorsement where celebrities are framed as sociallyclose personae leads to increased attitudes toward the advertisement. A pilot test on actual advertisements and three laboratory studies show that the celebrity endorsement is more effective when the advertisement features the celebrities as socially-close personae than when they are more distant; and these effects are more pronounced when the celebrity is local than foreign. Finally, the study proposes that consumer self-referencing towards celebrities mediates these effects. Anchored on construal level and social identity theories, implications on relational approach in celebrity endorsements and on international marketing communications are discussed complementarily with Asian culture inherently subscribing to relational celebrity endorsements.

This paper examines the co-creation of human brands identities exemplified by celebrities in a stakeholder-actor approach. By bringing together the theoretical web of service-dominant logic, stakeholder theory, actor-network theory, and consumer culture theory, we argue that human brand identities are co-created by multiple stakeholder-actors that have resources and incentives in the activities that make a up an enterprise of a human brand, including the celebrities themselves, consumer-fans, and business entities. By utilizing an observational, archival netnographic data from popular social media channels, four exemplars of celebrity identities from the Philippines demonstrate the co-creation of human brands. Findings illustrate key stakeholder-actors’ participations, production and consumption, and integrations of resources and incentives in the co-creation process as articulated in social media. The co-creation process happens through sociological translations codes namely: social construction and negotiation of identities, parasocialization, influence projection, legitimization, and utilization of human brand identities. These dynamics of human brand identity advance a stakeholder-actor paradigm of service co-creation that is adaptive to the predominant consumer culture and human ideals that surround the celebrity. Implications and future research on celebrity brand marketing management are discussed.