What's the point?

“A recent survey of the effectiveness of celebrity endorsement found that 79% of British and American viewers said that celebrity endorsement had no effect on how valuable they think a product is”.

Then what is the point really? Isn’t one of the main reasons for celebrity endorsements that the celebrity adds value to the brand it promotes? Brands spend so much money on celebrity endorsement that one wonders, as I’ve been asking in my recent posts, if its really worth it. In the same article that I found the above quote, I found another quote that said,

“There’s a cachet to using well-known people,” says advertising executive Rich Silverstein. “It’s seen as a method of speeding up the way information reaches customers”.

So perhaps, the success of celebrity endorsements does not have to measured by how many units of a brand’s products are sold as a result of the endorsement, maybe it’s measured by how many people know about the brand as a result of the endorsement and what they associate it with. Maybe endorsements are all about the buzz-the buzz generated by the celebrity endorsement.
A good example of this is the Chanel short film-type advert starring Nicole Kidman. After it was released, everyone was talking about it, how well made it was, how expense it looked (and was), how beautiful Nicole Kidman looked. Chanel also associated itself with a glamorous actress, Nicole Kidman, which says a lot about Chanel as a brand. Chanel in itself is already a high-quality, glamorous and much sought after brand and pairing itself with an equally glamorous and sought after actress only reinforces its place as a leading high fashion brand.