Celebrity advocacy

Celebrity advocacy now forms a specialised niche industry within the NGO sector and celebrity industries. The interaction between the two has become professionalised and formalised in the last 15 years as each sector has sought to links to their mutual advantage. This chapter explores the rise and development of celebrity advocacy among the NGO sector and some of its key moments within humanitarian communications. It also examines the different schools of thought about such advocacy (which run from immoral to radically effective). Finally, it considers how the politics of celebrity advocacy work in different contexts. The central argument is that the key to understanding the achievements and limitations of celebrity advocacy is to appreciate how responses to it vary according to different audiences. This fact provides the basis for future research into the topic.