Liam Neeson Has a Very Particular Set Of Product-Endorsing Skills

Want your product to stand out? Then you best bring in a celebrity A-team—”A” for advertising.

The marketing research firm Nielsen company launched an offering Tuesday that ranks celebrities according to their sales influence. The company’s first leaderboard for its new “N-Score” service, which evaluates celebrities who have appeared in commercials during the first three months of the year, grades stars based on a variety of factors including public awareness and likeability, AP reports.

Irish actor Liam Neeson, who has starred in films such as Taken and Schindler’s List, and who performed roles in Christopher Nolan’s Batman series, scored a top spot. He earned a so-called n-score of 94, sharing the lead with another Irish actor: former James Bond star Pierce Brosnan. Despite the tie, Nielsen deemed Neeson the winner in terms of influence over consumers.

The Nielsen service provides an alternative to the incumbent pitchmen rating service, Q Score from the firm Marketing Evaluations. The company hopes to provide marketers with better matches between audiences and celebrity endorsements.

As AP reporter David Bauder writes:

Besides attaching scores to celebrity endorsers, Nielsen intends to offer marketers detailed information about the personalities and habits of people who respond well to each celebrity so they can better match pitchmen and products, said Chad Dreas, Nielsen’s managing director of media analytics.

“What do they buy? Where do they shop? What do they watch?” said Dreas, describing the details Nielsen intends to sell.

Eighty-five percent of Americans familiar with Neeson view him positively, AP reports, citing Nielsen. Neeson, who appeared in an ad for the mobile gaming company Supercell Games, which makes the popular game Clash of Clans, also edged out Matthew McConaughey, who starred in commercials for cars this year. (For laughs, here are comedian Jim Carrey’s parodies of McConaughey’s Lincoln ads.)

Others celebrities who performed well in Nielsen’s rankings:

Jeff Bridges
Jennifer Garner
Natalie Portman
Sofia Vergara
Jim Parsons
Dennis Haysbert, and
J.K. Simmons

Given the magnetism of her magazine covers—flying off the newsstand into customer’s hands—one must wonder how Rihanna scores, too.