The star attraction

Would you buy a brand of plywood or cement because your favourite film star endorsed it or would you go with whatever your contractor recommended? What about opening a new bank account or choosing a travel website? There was a time when celebrities sold only soap and chocolate. Now, it’s hard to find a billboard or TV screen that doesn’t have a film star or cricketer’s face plastered on it, selling almost everything under the sun.

The jury is still out on whether celebrity advertising works or not. You have as many studies telling you that signing on a film star or sports hero makes absolutely no difference to the quarterly sales graph as you have ones that say there’s a distinct increase in sales and brand recall. Even the gurus have divided opinions. Jack Trout has been vocal in his disapproval.

“My problem with advertising in India is that everybody wants to do Bollywood. That’s because it is so much easier to do that than finding an interesting way to make the product a star,” he said to Outlook Business last year. Grant McCracken is a little more forgiving. In his often-quoted essay, McCracken says “…when celebrities are depicted in ads, they bring their own culturally related meanings, thereto, irrespective of the required promotional role.” Take the middle path and it would still appear celebrity-led marketing is a hit-and-miss affair, at best. 

Then why is it so popular in India? From 25% in 2001, the share of celebrity-led campaigns in total ad volume has climbed sharply to 64% in 2013, according to Manish Porwal, MD of media marketing company Alchemist Talent Solutions. Not all those ads are your usual FMCG brand promotions — although those remain the most popular. TAM India numbers for the top 10 categories for celebrity endorsements show that between January and March 2014, soap, shampoo, milk and soft drinks accounted for 25% of ad volume, while liquor, perfumes and paints accounted for just 3% each. Tellingly, these last three categories weren’t even in the top 10 in the same period last year. 

Of late, you can see famous people shilling for banks, insurance, online services and even products where the consumer is not necessarily invested and involved in the product decision, such as cement and plywood. In the past year alone, yesteryear Bollywood baddies Prem Chopra, Shakti Kapoor and Ranjeet appeared in a campaign for Havells wires, Katrina Kaif became the brand ambassador for Johnson Tiles and, most recently, Nana Patekar endorsed Century Ply. Shilpa Shetty is pushing Exo dishwashing bars, Irrfan Khan has been dancing with skimpily-clad women for Arise television and comeback queen Madhuri Dixit has signed on as the face of Oral-B and Maggi. (see: Dancing with the stars)

Dancing with the stars

Celebrities who endorsed top brands

So, is it just lazy advertising or does celebrity advertising serve a purpose? “All too often, we see celebrities being used as a replacement for the lack of ideas,” complains Sonal Dabral, chairman and CEO, DDB Mudra. The veteran adman isn’t against brand ambassadors — he uses them frequently, most recently in the Century Plywood campaign with Nana Patekar. What he’s protesting is indiscriminately tossing them around like confetti.

“Celebrities do add some value to the brand. When you hire someone to endorse your brand for the right reasons, no one is expensive or cheap, just valuable. In the case of Century Plywood, our messaging would have been weaker without Patekar.”

Others point to the numerous advantages of bringing a well-known face on board. Jagdeep Kapoor, marketing veteran and founder-CMD, Samsika Marketing, says, “While not having a celebrity does not make your campaign ineffective, having a convincing one lends credibility to your campaign.” Besides, image is everything when a celebrity is hired for a particular campaign.

“Aamir Khan is widely known as a perfectionist. His presence in the Godrej ad was not just for the sake of the brand but also to lend his own values to the brand by his presence,” says Porwal. Similarly, Rajiv Anand, president, retail banking at Axis Bank, says Deepika Padukone’s age and success in the film industry without the aid of a legacy was why she was chosen to headline the bank’s recent campaign.

And non-consumer brands insist that the reasoning holds true even for their products. Century, for instance, is exuberant at having signed on the usually reclusive Patekar. “We wanted to take the category to the consumers and increase affinity for it. Since Patekar had never appeared in an ad before, he would obviously bring in more attention to the brand,” says Amit Kumar Gope, marketing head, Century Plywood.

Adds Dabral, “In a heavy influencer category, we wanted to change the conversation to more than just plywood. During their pitch, our creative team said this campaign would be incomplete without Nana. He has a quirky personality and would be acceptable as the ‘voice of conscience’ in the campaign.” Both client and agency agree that the aim is not just to meet a financial target but to work on an image of the brand as more than just a commodity.

Not small change

Still, a celebrity endorser is an expensive way to build brand image. The top Bollywood stars charge anywhere upward of ₹5 crore per endorsement, while cricketers don’t come for anything less than a couple of crore each. Top-billed male actors earn in tens of crore per deal, while lesser known or newer stars earn anywhere between two lakh and a crore, depending on the stature of the brand. But brands justify the expense by pointing to reduced media cost. “You need fewer spots to establish your campaign with a recognisable face,” points out Porwal. Kapoor explains, “A 10-second spot on a primetime show costs ₹2.5 lakh. When you have a celebrity campaign, instead of running 100 spots, you can achieve the same impact with 20.”

Besides, adds Porwal, the impact of a celebrity-led campaign lasts longer. “If a certain ad increases the impact of the brand by 1.5X, having a credible celebrity for two years pushes it to 6X or 7X,” he says. Each organisation has its own ways of measuring the success of a campaign — either through brand image, recall and advocacy or through sales growth.

In good times and bad, signing on a brand ambassador is the easy part, aver marketing experts. It’s the decisions taken during the course of the association that are more nerve-wracking — do you stick with them through the ups and downs in their career or drop them like a hot potato at the sight of the first stumble? What do you do with your ambassador once they announce retirement or decide to take a sabbatical?

This is where brand managers and agencies in India and the West differ. Celebrity reputations have taken a beating too frequently in the US in the past few years — Martha Stewart, Paula Deen, Lance Armstrong, Tiger Woods and Chris Brown, to name just a few — and it’s an all too real worry that the brand’s fortunes may dip with a fall in the stature of its ambassador. In almost all these cases, the brands concerned have quietly dissociated themselves from their heroes — Accenture let Woods go, Nike dropped Armstrong and Walmart waved adieu to Deen.

In India, though, the general public is so much in awe of its superstars that it is perfectly willing to forgive them any transgressions. That is why Salman Khan and Saif Ali Khan continue to sell the products they do, despite court proceedings on against both for manslaughter and poaching, respectively. Some are used despite having quit their day jobs — retired cricketers Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar signed new deals with Gillette and Musafir.com, respectively, last year. Kapoor says, “Brands hire retired or older celebrities because they are relevant, recognisable and more economical than younger stars.”

The bigger risk in India, according to Kapoor, is that “people make the mistake of placing the celebrity before the brand, which makes you lose sight of the campaign objective”. Prime example: Virat Kohli’s ad for Cinthol — where all we see are quick camera movements centred around Kohli’s face with an incomprehensible tune playing in the background — or Akshay Kumar and Salman Khan for ThumsUp — 30 seconds of high-action stunts but nothing about the taste of the cola.

But brand and marketing experts unanimously agree that no amount of stardust can guarantee a rise in sales. Explains Kapoor, “It’s more about the long-term effect the relationship has on your brand. Brand affinity is what we gain.”

Rajiv Sodhi, VP and MD of domain registrar and web hosting company GoDaddy.com, which recently signed on Mithun Chakraborty, adds that celebrity cost isn’t an issue when the objective is to improve brand perception. “Besides, one hopes that this campaign can be sustained over the years.”

Bottomline: whether you paused that finger on the remote to watch what Padukone was promoting or because you were interested in her, brand managers and ad agencies don’t care — as long as you remember the brand at the store aisle.