This article reports on an aided brand recall experiment testing the effect of celebrities compared to popular music in TV advertisements. The effect of three cues, celebrity,music, and celebrity + music, was analysed and crosschecked with the moderating effect of familiarity with the cues. The results show a stronger effect of the celebrity cue compared to music. Familiarity with the celebrity leads to higher recall than non-familiarity, whereas the results for familiarity with the music are inconsistent with stronger recall for non-familiar music for some of the cues. The results enrichen the understanding of how celebrities and music can be used as advertising cues.