• by Karl Greenberg , January 13, 2016

Is it possible to over-market a celebrity? Apparently not. Rihanna, who last spring became the first black spokesperson for the French fashion house Dior, is the most marketable of all. A new study from NPD on celebrity drawing power, finds that her fans have more distinctive brand preferences than any other big-name celebrity in any genre, including athletes, actors, and musicians.

The organization says the study is powered by its BrandLink database of responses from 92,000 consumer surveys covering 1,000 celebrities and 2,500 brands across automotive, consumer packaged goods, beauty/fashion, financial services, restaurants, technology, and others. 

According to NPD, a celebrity is considered to be a strong endorsement opportunity for a brand if his or her fans are at least 50% more likely to use the brand. The endorsement score reflects the relative marketability of big-name celebrities, those the firm identifies as having at least 10 million fans, based on the total number of brands for whom they would be a strong endorser. 

Thus, Rihanna’s index score of 367 means she has almost 3.7 times as many strong brand endorsement opportunities as the average top-shelfer. NPD says Rihanna outranks Angelina Jolie, Tim McGraw, Coldplay, and Stephen Curry. The second-highest score goes to Beyonce, followed by Ne-Yo, Usher, Wiz Khalifa, The Weeknd, J.Lo, Kevin Hart, Dr. Dre and Khloe Kardashian.  

NPD says Jeep was one of the brands driving Rihanna’s top endorsement score. That doesn’t mean she pitches Jeep, but that NPD’s math finds that her fans show a distinct preference for that brand. So, notes NPD, while both Rihanna and Beyonce are top R&B stars and have close scores in this study, the BrandLink data seems to show that Rihanna’s fans are much more likely to choose Jeep.   

“That celebrities are media properties in their own right, with audiences that have nuanced brand preferences”, said Barbara Zack, VP, The NPD Group, in a statement. “In the same way that every sitcom is not equally valuable to a particular brand, neither is every celebrity equally valuable to a particular brand.”