Celebrity invasion of private labels

What do celebrities bring to the table as endorsers and as co-creators?

The private labels game is hotting up. Enough for Deepika Padukone to launch ‘All About You’. For Hrithik Roshan to flaunt ‘HRX’, Virat Kohli to promote ‘Wrogn’ and for Sachin Tendulkar to partner Arvind Brands for ‘True Blue’. And Yuvraj Singh has ‘YWC’,  Yes, private labels are here with a vengeance.
 

All private offerings are not local. Jabong retails quite a handful of foreign labels too: Miss Selfridge, River Island, G- Star Raw among many others. Jabong also has an indigenous range of offerings under Sangria, Lara Karen, Incult and a special line ‘Alia Bhatt for Jabong’. Private labels have worked well in the West, Classic Cola, a private label made by Cott Corporation for J. Sainsbury supermarkets in the United Kingdom was launched in April 1994 at a price 28 per cent lower than Coca-Cola’s. Today it accounts for 65 per cent of total cola sales through Sainsbury’s and for 15 per cent of the UK cola market. That is the potential potency of private labels.
 

The twist in the tale in India is the involvement of celebrities. Overseas too Britney Spears’ perfumes, JLO’s apparels and Victoria ‘Posh’ Beckham’s line of fashion clothing have made a mark. But in India, a celebrity co-creator and endorser is almost the norm, especially in the e-commerce fashion play. 
 

The moot question is what value do celebrities bring to private labels? To answer that we must first appreciate that private labels are often positioned as low-cost alternatives to regional, national or international brands. A private label gives e-commerce sites product exclusivity. The truth also is that private labels are half-way between unbranded merchandise and ‘name’ brands. By literally putting a ‘label’ onto the product, the retailer puts a minimum quality assurance. The elevation to ‘private label’ brings in elements of ‘branding’ in the form of enhanced customer recognition, more customer trial, greater satisfaction and deeper customer loyalty.
 

The endorser raises the equity of the private label, creating some hype, adding noticeability and visibility, and most importantly imbuing the label with ‘aspiration quotient’. But not all such experiments have succeeded. Shahrukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan both had perfumes named after them, as did Lata Mangeshkar. None really made a mark. 
 

The celebrity as co-creator sounds like a better idea. It may work with Deepika or Kangana or Alia getting involved with the styling of a line of womens-wear. But experiments by The Label Life, for example, in launching lines ‘guided’ by Susanne Khan Roshan, Malaika Arora Khan and Bipasha Basu have come a cropper. Similarly, one may still trust Sachin with a toothpaste called ‘Sach’(launched by Future Group) but buying a mobile called ‘SRT’(launched by Smartron/Eros) from him would stretch the limits of his brand equity. Co-creation has worked when there is an expert involvement in the brand, when it is created with domain experts like Shahnaz Hussain (cosmetics) or Chef Sanjeev Kapoor (food, allied products). Similarly M S Dhoni launched ‘Seven’, a fitness and active lifestyle brand. 
 

Building private labels allows retailers to make unique products for premium pricing or  produce commodity products profitably. This segment is all set to evolve in terms of products and celebrity involvements; watch this space for more. 

The author is ex-group CEO of Zee Telefilms and former founder chairman of  Dentsu India