Celebrity promotion of charities is largely ineffective at raising awareness, but can make the stars more popular with the public, according to a recent study.

Researchers found that 66 percent of people cannot link any celebrity with a list of seven well-known charities and aid organizations. They conclude that celebrities are generally ineffective at encouraging people to care about "distant suffering."

"Our survey found that while awareness of major charities and aid organizations brands was high, awareness of celebrity advocates for those brands was low," researchers wrote in their study. "Instead it was plain from the focus groups that most people supported the charities they supported because of personal connections in their lives and families which made these causes important, not because of the celebrities."

For the study, the research team surveyed more than 100 people, with almost half keeping diaries on their thoughts about poorer countries.

"In the diaries, only 6 percent of all entries were about celebrity humanitarianism - almost all of which were about programs or advertisements in the build-up to Comic Relief," researcher Martin Scott of the University of East Anglia said in a statement.

The seven organizations that two-thirds of people could not associate celebrities with were: Action Aid; Amnesty International; CAFOD; Christian Aid; Oxfam; Save the Children and the Red Cross.

Researchers said the evidence suggest the ability of celebrity advocacy to reach people is limited.

Celebrities did not support charities in order to promote themselves, but this was the unintended outcome of their work, the researchers said.

"Regardless of what celebrities may want in terms of publicity - and the interviews suggest that many would seek to maximize the attention given to their cause, and not to them - it is clear that the celebrity can often do better out of this attention than their causes," the researchers wrote.

The findings were recently published online in the International Journal of Cultural Studies.