New Delhi, Oct 15: They are an increasingly jaded set; the cost of acquiring them is high and skyrocketing, and their brand loyalty cannot really be counted on. No, it’s not consumers we are talking about but the celebrities companies use to get closer to their target audience.
Here’s a snapshot of what’s happening in the world of brand endorsements: Amitabh Bachchan, the country’s highest paid brand ambassador repeatedly tells the media that he’s endorsing brands to make money to pay off his debts.
Shah Rukh Khan has gone on record at an event to say that while he’s signed up with a car brand, a snack brand, a soft drink, he’s open to offers for any left-over spaces — if the price is right. Today, he’s keeping time to Tag Heuer when it seems just yesterday that he’d signed on to be brand ambassador for Omega.
Sachin Tendulkar is a favourite with the automobile industry with both Fiat and TVS Victor battling it out, often back to back, as his vehicle of choice, when the man’s preference for Ferrari is common knowledge. And the so-called cool-off period between ads seems minuscule with Sourav Ganguly cooling off to a Pepsi with the gusto he’d hitherto reserved only for Coke.
Undeterred by these happenings or mishaps, however, companies continue to spend enormous amounts of money on celebrity endorsements, relying chiefly on the old stand-bys of Amitabh Bachchan, Sachin Tendulkar and Shah Rukh Khan. Says Sashi Kalathil, executive president, Pepsi foods, “These endorsers act as a creative magnifier. If you use a celebrity well it can get awesome marketing working for you.”. (Do you buy products endorsed by celebrities?)
Adds Rajeev Sharma, national director - brand planning, Leo Burnett, “They borrow equity of the celebrity and try to rub it off on the brand. It also helps build salience and break clutter.” It’s in fact the first reason cited to use a celebrity — choosing to ignore the voices of dissent that say ads featuring celebrities have almost formed a clutter of their own given their sheer number. People often associate ads more with the star appearing in it than the product being advertised — the ad enjoys a greater recall than the brand.
Celebrities have been a favourite with relatively unknown brands looking to establish themselves in the market — Santro’s campaign with Shah Rukh being cited as a great example. However the flipside holds true as well — some auto manufacturers deliberately stay away from celebrities in order to not tarnish the equity they expect the brand to build of its own volition. Says Niteen Bhagwat, executive director and CEO, Interface, which handles Scorpio from Mahindra, “We have advised against one when there was a danger of the celebrity taking away from the product story and adding perhaps undesirable associations with a new brand. We felt Scorpio had its own story to tell which has been borne out by its performance.” Adds Vinay Piparsania, vice president, external affairs and director sales, Ford India, “We have chosen to keep our brand as the star, rather than go for the celebrity option.”
Even well-known brands, after years of coasting along on normal advertising, are tempted to rope in a celebrity. Amitabh is supposed to be giving doughty old Nerolac an image of leadership — the star is being used as a bridge to link the perception of the brand to its reality. Sunil Doshi, CEO, Alliance Media and Entertainment who has been involved in several of the Big B’s endorsement projects believes it’s worked — he claims Nerolac’s market capitalisation increased vis-a-vis arch rival Asian Paints. Interestingly enough, some rumours doing the rounds of the industry suggest that consumers have confused the new campaign for an Asian Paints one. Says Doshi, “People still use Bachchan for his FPG (friend, philosopher, guide) appeal to determine their leadership status.”
What’s particularly puzzling is the sheer diversity of brands that most of the big celebrities endorse. Every agency and client claims it arrived at the choice of its celebrity after an in-depth study linking the values the celebrity represents to those of the brand. In fact, Rajeev Sharma says, “Any megabrand is a protagonist for a point of view: finding what the brand stands for is a key part of the exercise. Choosing a celebrity who endorses that point of view is the second part and not as difficult.” The top Indian celebrities, though, cover a hell of a lot of ground — companies and agencies seem to believe they stand for everything from dependability to irreverence, from being witty, intelligent and authoritative to being somehow loveable, bumbling and confused.
Most agencies admit the current celebrities are spread so thin across various emotional states because there simply aren’t too many heroes of national stature in the county. Says Bhagwat, “In India, there are only two sets of people who are celebrities — film stars and cricketers. I don’t think we’ve managed to broadbase the set to include people from other sports, academicians, writers or even political icons; though we had these 50 years back in Gandhi and Nehru. Also marketing is still nascent and there are many intrinsically solid people who need to be made into celebrities.” The trick with Indian celebrities according to Kalathil is to try catch them young.
Another sporadic strategy has been to look to the West — everyone from Shane Warne to Dickie Bird to Steve Waugh have, at one time or the other, found themselves delivering product pitches on Indian TV screens. However the greatest instance of such self indulgence is widely reckoned to be a commercial for Siyaram featuring past-his-prime tennis star Boris Becker (trying to play cricket no less!) who, shortly after the commercial was released, received a lot of bad press on account of defaulting on tax payments. The link between these celebrities and the brands they endorse in India is at best, tenuous.