Celebrity charity work ‘not effective’

Celebrity promotion of charities is ineffective at raising awareness but can make the stars more popular with the public, a study says.

A survey of more than 2,000 people in Britain found two-thirds could not link any celebrity with a list of seven well-known charities and aid organisations that they worked for.

Stars did not support charities for self-promotion, but this was the unintended outcome of their work, researchers concluded.

The seven organisations mentioned in the survey were Action Aid, Amnesty International, CAFOD, Christian Aid, Oxfam, Save the Children and the Red Cross.

Speaking about their study which also used focus groups, Professor Dan Brockington, of the University of Manchester, and Professor Spencer Henson, of the University of Sussex, said: “Our survey found that while awareness of major NGOs (non-governmental organisations) brands was high, awareness of celebrity advocates for those brands was low.

“Instead it was plain from the focus groups that most people supported the charities that they supported because of personal connections in their lives and families which made these causes important, not because of the celebrities.

“The evidence suggests therefore that the ability of celebrity advocacy to reach people is limited and dominated in Britain by some extremely prominent telethons and the work of a few stars.

“Regardless of what celebrities may want in terms of publicity — and the interviews suggest that many would seek to maximise the attention given to their cause and not to them — it is clear that the celebrity can often do better out of this attention than their causes.”