When I worked at UNICEF, there was a real warmth and affection from donors and supporters for Audery Hepburn which I have never seen at any other charity since. I did not see any other UNICEF celebrity have the same kudos as Hepburn.
I was fascinated to read The UK Public Opinion Monitor (UK-POM) 12th survey of the UK Public Opinion Monitor undertaken in April 2012 with 2,842 valid responses on famous people, celebrities and their work in the public domain.
The work was undertaken by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) Sussex in the UK and
the University of Guelph in Canada. The panel was broadly representative of the UK population, with sample weights used to correct for any remaining instances of over or under-representation.
It seems, having a celebrity promote your cause or charity may not be of benefit in the UK. In a comprehensive analysis of the impact of celebrities om UK life, 83 per cent of respondents look at news about celebrities.
Yet, around 50 per cent of respondents indicated that they take no notice of a charity's message when a celebrity is involved.
14 per cent indicated, more extremely, that they are put off the message.
Conversely, 33 per cent indicated that they become more aware of the problem and/or charity or organisation when it is promoted by a celebrity.
In most cases, people could not identify which charities had celebrities.
I would be fascinated to see if the results are different for a more celebrity obsessed country like the USA or Australia.
The question for charities needs to be does the celebrity's involvement give us any more money? any more volunteers? If there are any costs involved (for travel etc, most celebs give their time pro bono), is the return worth it.
