cpi-Index – Leading Index that Assesses the Advertising Impact of Celebrities

• Profound Selection of Endorsers

  The cpi-Index is scientifically-based^[1] and objective. Its ability to predict the advertising impact of celebrities has been validated empirically in several studies.^[2]

• Assessing Image Attributes that are the Key Drivers Determining a Celebrity’s Ability to Impact Consumers

  The cpi-Index evaluates six key image attributes that are crucial for a celebrity’s ability to impact on consumers: popularity/appeal, trustworthiness, opinion leadership, expectation of success, uniqueness, and positive differentiation.

• Realistic and Differentiated Assessment of Awareness and Potential Reach

  The cpi-Index measures a celebrity’s awareness differentiated by name and photo and assesses its overall reach within your target markets and target groups.

• Ranking & Benchmarking

  Our broad database of assessed celebrities allows comprehensive ranking and benchmarking of celebrities and their classification to one of six performance clusters.

• Target Group and Segment-Specific Analyses

  The cpi-Index measures a celebrity’s impact on your target audience and in different segments (such as sociodemographic groups).

• International Applicability

  The cpi-Index helps you determine the impact of national and international celebrities in the countries relevant to you.

• Online surveys to match your target audience requirements

• Reliable and valid study design: standardized survey of awareness and image attributes

• Differentiated assessment of awareness: image and name recognition

• Survey of image attributes: popularity/appeal, trustworthiness, opinion leadership, expectation of success, uniqueness, and positive differentiation

• Statistically-based identification of image strength based on assessments of individual image attributes

• Statistically-based consolidation of the awareness and image strength data to create the cpi-Index

We were driven by our goal of offering brands and agencies an independent, objective, scientifically sound assessment scale for rating celebrities and selecting endorsers. To this end, we collaborated with internationally renowned market researcher Professor Marc Fischer, who teaches and conducts research at the universities of Cologne (Germany) and Sydney (Australia).

We first generated a set of image attributes commonly used in research and real-world marketing that are relevant to determining the advertising impact of a celebrity. We then conducted a representative empirical study (n > 2,000) rating a selection of celebrities according to these image attributes. We subsequently used multivariate data analysis to identify those six image attributes of celebrities that have the strongest influence on the attitudes and behavior of consumers. These image attributes were then consolidated according to their statistical relevance to create an index called “image strength”. By scaling image strength with a celebrity’s reach, i.e. a celebrity’s awareness, the cpi-Index is obtained. The cpi-Index is thus regarded as the key metric to measure a celebrity’s advertising impact.

The validity of the cpi-Index was further confirmed in two studies, which measured the effectiveness of TV endorsement campaigns.^[3] These two broad-based studies (n > 2,000 persons in each) found significant (p < 0.05) positive correlations (0.7–0.8) between the central construct of the cpi-Index, image strength and the following marketing KPIs: spot likeability, brand sympathy, perceived product quality and purchase intention.