Are We Nearing the End of Celebrity Endorsements?

Over the past few weeks, Regis' sidekick Kelly Ripa has appeared in a variety of television commercials for products including Tide laundry detergent and Electrolux appliances. What does Kelly Ripa know about a dishwasher or an oven? Do you believe her when she says it's a better appliance? Would she endorse Whirlpool or GE if they paid her more? I'd suggest the answer is yes. This is just one example of celebrities endorsing products for big dollars when their endorsement really means nothing as to the quality, features or durability of the product.

Last night, we wrote about Meebo and their new marketing program. Part of the marketing program is to push users to share and spread links from companies and their brands. The idea of people on a social network sharing advertising that appeals to them is an idea that I can see growing very quickly if implemented correctly.

We all know what happened with Facebook's Beacon program last year. I think Beacon was on the right track but unfortunately they went about it incorrectly. Here's what I'd like to see: a friend endorsement system and the creation of a new advertising category named, "social advertising". Here are the basics on how the program would work. You enter the products you'd be willing to endorse to your friends into the system. Your friends do the same. When you are ready to purchase an item, you check the friend endorsement system and review your friend's product endorsements in the category you are interested in purchasing within. To combat any fraud with the reviews, I'd suggest using a model similar to Reevoo where only products actually purchased can be reviewed and endorsed. While this might sound very much like a typical reviews site, the idea is that a new social layer will be applied on top of the reviews and, in addition, the ability to endorse a product is new as well.

The system would be tied into Facebook, MySpace, etc. and could be expanded to allow friends to swap and/or buy/sell from each other in a private network. The system would absolutely be more robust in its feature set, I am just simplifying it for the sake of discussion.

The bottom line is that, outside of the teenage market, I can see friend endorsements taking the lead over celebrity endorsements. Wouldn't you rather have your best friend tell you why the Electrolux appliances are right for you than Kelly Ripa?

For reference, here's Kelly Ripa shilling the suite of Electrolux appliances: