Charities are still reliant on celebrities to gain media attention, according to publicity expert Max Clifford.
The PR guru said that charities often needed a star to help them highlight their causes.
He gave the example of how Simon Cowell's involvement with children's hospice charity Chase had helped raise funds.
Unicef's head of communications, Angela Travis, said nine out of ten calls to their press office were from journalists asking for celebrities to speak about an issue.
She was speaking at the Third Sector conference, where she explained how Jemina Khan, socialite and former wife of Imran Khan, spoke out against the media's obsession with celebrities when she launched Unicef's recent ‘Gift' campaign.
When Kahn appeared on television she said the programme-makers should have invited the executive director of Unicef on air instead as he knew far more about the issue than her.
However, Society Guardian editor Patrick Butler said he had an unofficial rule not to use celebrity stories, saying they didn't add anything for they way the paper wanted to write about issues involving charities.
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