CELEBRITY ENDORSEMENTS

Researchers study how celebrity endorsements may drive advocacy by fans

By our African Marketing Confederation News Team | 2025

Celebrities and organisations with social-cause agendas could use the power of fanbases to successfully push their social goals.

The South Korean boy band BTS boasts a fanbase of tens of millions of dedicated followers, known for their devotion to the group and its social causes.

 

Now, new research from Virginia Commonwealth University in the US confirms that endorsements and advocacy campaigns from BTS and other celebrities can change the advocacy behaviour of their fan base.

Boy band BTS. Photo: JM Ajeong, Wikimedia Commons

The findings of the study by researcher Dr Baobao Song have been published in the journal Public Relations Review.

 

“A fan might think, ‘I’m involved in this because my celebrity is advocating for it. I want to see them succeed. I want the fandom to succeed’,” explains Song, who is an assistant professor studying corporate social responsibility.

 

 

“That’s why we singled out fandom as the subject for this study – because fans naturally are already attached to the celebrity.”

 

Song, who is herself a BTS superfan, wanted to find out if celebrity advocacy campaigns can actually cause fans to change their behaviour.

 

She focused on BTS because the band’s large international fanbase, referred to as the ‘BTS Army’, is known for being extremely engaged with the band and active online. In 2020, for example, Army members matched BTS’ US$1-million donation to the Black Lives Matter campaign within 24 hours – unprompted by the band.

BTS fans participate in content creation

“What’s unique about BTS fans is that they are highly participative in their content creation,” Song says. “Usually, we see fandoms as content consumers, but BTS fans have a very high interest in producing their own content and connecting with each other.”

For the study, Song wanted to assess how the band’s ongoing partnership with the United Nations influences BTS fans’ intentions to engage in sustainability volunteering and advocacy work.

Song and the study’s co-author, Dr Minhee Choi of Texas Tech University, first interviewed BTS fans in both the US and South Korea. Then, they recruited Gen Z and millennial adults who self-identified as BTS fans to participate in an online survey.

The survey responses supported the idea that celebrity endorsements shape the behavioural intentions of their fans. That effect was driven by three factors: interdependence between fans and the celebrity, the fans’ individual identification within the fandom, and the fandom’s norms.

And while not all celebrity fandoms are as large and influential as BTS’, other celebrities can still use the power of their fandoms to push their own social goals. The findings could be especially important for organisations hoping to work with celebrities to advance their causes.

However, Song notes that brands and organisations should be aware that celebrities need to have a strong personal connection with their fans – like that of BTS and the BTS Army – for their advocacy to change behaviour and intentions.

“How can you maximise the benefits of a celebrity partnership?” Song asks. “You may want to understand whether the fans and the celebrity have an interdependence that is strong enough to motivate their fans to follow the celebrity in behaviour [and] to support your cause.”

You can find out more about the study, titled ‘From celebrity advocacy to fandom advocacy: Harness the power of participatory fandom culture’, here.

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