This is a Guest Post by Brittany Lyons. Brittany aspires to be a psychology professor, but decided to take some time off from grad school to help people learn to navigate the academic lifestyle. She currently lives in Spokane, Washington, where she spends her time reading science fiction and walking her dog.

Celebrities and product endorsements date back to 1863, when Queen Victoria and Popes Leo XIII and Pius X endorsed the alcoholic drink Vin Mariani—the drink that would later evolve in American markets to become Coca-Cola. Consumers have become familiar and comfortable with celebrities promoting products in television commercials, prints ads and even radio spots, and it doesn't take PhDs to spot that it's a marketing campaign. But in recent years, the Internet has taken it a step further. Celebrities have begun to promote products through their Twitter feed, sending the message out to their millions of follower-fans. But is it disingenuous of them to promote products over a platform designed to promote personal connections? Are they abusing the trust of their fans?


Twitter endorsements have grow into a quite lucrative business, with some celebrities earning as much as $10,000 for a single tweet. Unlike traditional forms of advertising, a celebrity does not have to do any actual work, like filming a commercial, to earn this money. In some instances, their Twitter accounts are maintained by their official representatives, so the stars don't even type the words themselves. But because their name is attached to the tweet, it is instantly believed by the majority of their followers to be coming directly from the celebrity.

Lines blur easily with celebrity Twitter endorsements because they do not always sound like paid endorsements. For example, a singer may tweet a positive comment about a movie she “just saw”, and their followers will believe that they've just read about an actual experience that the star recently had. In reality, the promotional company behind that movie paid her to tweet positively about it, regardless of whether or not she actually liked or even saw it. Invariably, several fans who may not have considered the movie before will then see it, thinking it has the approval of their favorite celebrity.

The big question that the aforementioned scenario poses is whether or not this trend is an abuse of the social networking platform and of the fans themselves. After all, when your favorite celebrity endorses a soft drink via a television commercial, you know that you're watching a paid advertisement. Tweets are not nearly as transparent, especially the well written ones, and a strong argument could be made that stars are deliberately misleading their fans in order to pick up an easy paycheck. In this regard, abuse definitely seems to be occurring, at least from some celebrity Twitter accounts.

But not all celebrities hide their paid tweets from their followers. Some of them, like actor Matt Lanter of 90210 fame, add “hashtags” to the end of their paid tweets, labeling them as paid. Examples of these hashtags include #sponsored and #ad. Separating their personal tweets from paid tweets in this format far more transparent, and allows fans to distinguish the star's real life and thoughts from what he is paid to say. This can tread into a grey area, however, when a star uses the hashtags for a while, and then stops. This leaves their followers wondering if the paid ads have gone away altogether, or if they're simply been morphed into their general timeline. Plus, many advertisers do not like the hashtags, because it makes otherwise unassuming readers wary of the product and lowers the return rate on Twitter endorsements.

Although only an estimated 11% of internet users has a Twitter account (much less than the estimated 50% of internet users who have a Facebook account), marketing departments continue to view celebrity tweets as a potential industry changer. Paying an actor, musician or athlete a few thousand dollars to reach out to their large list of Twitter followers has the potential for a bigger impact than traditional advertising, especially in the short term, and is far less expensive than producing a commercial or print ad. This is because people who are already following the celebrity are much more inclined to be interested in what that specific star has to say, and no one has to spend any time in the studio to make the ad.

Due to the lucrative nature of these tweets, it is a virtual certainty that they will not only continue, but that their numbers will rapidly grow. Regardless of the ethical questions that currently surround them, and which surely surrounded more traditional celebrity endorsements when they first began, this is a culture driven by consumerism. Celebrities will continue to do what they do best, which is a mixture of entertaining us and encouraging us to head out to the local shopping mall.