Americans love to buy things, but sometimes choosing which things to buy is a little too hard for our hamburger-stuffed brains to handle. That’s where ads—or “advertisements,” as they’re known in the industry—come in. If that word sounds familiar, it’s probably because the concept of advertising was recently popularized by the hit TV show Mad Men, in which a secretive man who drinks at work is tasked with writing flashy slogans that will get people to buy things.
Mad Men may not be real, but people who appear in ads and tell us what to buy certainly are. They can be British vacuum cleaner inventors, cartoon animals with cereal addictions, or even celebrities. Of all the celebrities who tell people what to buy, though, nobody is more effective than Liam Neeson—at least according to a recent study conducted by the TV ratings fans at the Nielsen company, which decided to start studying this sort of thing.
The study cataloged the celebrities who appeared in commercials over the first three months of the year (this year, presumably) and then attached scores to them that were based on highly scientific qualities like public awareness, likability, and influence. Neeson earned a completely arbitrary 94 points—tied with Pierce Brosnan, though Neeson was given the win for some reason—and, as far as we can tell, it was all based on the well-received Clash Of Clans commercial he did during the Super Bowl. Did that ad really get a ton of people to download Clash Of Clans? It must have, or else Neeson wouldn’t have such a high adver-score.
Other celebrities who are good at getting people to buy things are Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Natalie Portman, Sofia Vergara, Jim Parsons, Dennis Haysbert, and J.K. Simmons. In other words, people who are just pretty famous in general.