Previous research has suggested that celebrity advertisements have negative impacts on consumers’ perceptions of the advertised brands or products. Such negative impacts are called “eclipsing”, which occurs when the celebrity overshadows the endorsed brands and products. It has been found that eclipsing occurs when the celebrity and the brand image do not match and/or when consumer attachment to a celebrity is low. However, since two conditions are related to individual characteristics, marketers cannot operate the conditions under which the eclipsing occurs. Moreover, previous research has focused on only consumer attitudes. What is essential for consumers’ actual purchase is that they can remember the advertised brands and easily recall them. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the impacts of eclipsing on brand memory and to identify the suppressed conditions which can be easily operated by marketers or advertisers. In particular, we focus on the facial expression of celebrity and examine the effect of smile and rest on brand attitude and brand recall. To test proposed hypotheses empirically, this study conducted a laboratory experiment based on a 2 (eclipsing: high vs. low) × 2 (facial expression: smile vs. rest) × 2 (sex of celebrity endorser: male vs. female) between-subjects factorial design. The results showed that the interaction effects of eclipsing and facial expression on brand recall were significant. It suggests that the effects of eclipsing on brand recall are suppressed when the celebrity endorser has the resting expression. The finding of this study implies that marketers or advertisement creators should consider carefully the celebrity endorsers’ facial expression not to prevent consumers’ memory of the advertised brand.

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.