Debate: Do celebrity endorsements work?

Ravi Krishnan,
Managing Director IMG/TWI, South Asia,
and Senior International V P, IMG

I am often asked who's the biggest celeb of them all? Amitabh Bachchan, Sachin Tendulkar, Shah Rukh Khan or Virender Sehwag?

While the ranking can be an interesting exercise for debate, there remains no doubt that celebrity endorsement can be an effective tool to build and sustain a brand if managed correctly. Handled incorrectly, it can also be nothing short of disastrous.

Celeb endorsement is not a "one-size-fits-all" model. There are innumerable examples to highlight this fact and one that easily comes to mind is Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe, two diametrically opposite personalities who ruled tennis in the late 1970s.

The calm, collected, cool, understated Borg endorsed Fila while the enfant terrible, McEnroe, was the ambassador for Nike. The personal traits that celebs bring to a brand play the role of a catalyst in brand perception and acceptance that can create strong consumer connect.

In this era of soundbytes and channel surfing, there is a demand to capture people's time and focus. The key for the marketer is to get the message across effectively and embed it in the minds of his target audience.

Buying the superstar's time is like buying a high value automobile. Keeping it in the garage won't get you any benefit. It has to be driven around and used smartly.

It is necessary to target celebrities who will appeal to your target audience. A company needs to research potential celebrity endorsers to ensure that they are not in conflict with an organisation's value system or likely to generate negative publicity. Celebrities should add worth to the brand's story and enhance it but not overpower it.

Over-exposure of the brand ambassador can be an area of concern. The effectiveness can be diluted when marketing heads around the country discover that "Sachin is the missing ingredient in their product".

IF Tendulkar is the BIG IDEA, the plot could be lost. While signing on Sachin may be a good idea, leveraging the endorsement effectively is the key. Some supercelebs like Tendulkar or Bachchan might not be a fairly safe bet when your brand is their tenth.

Not only has the celeb to maintain popularity but also has to remain "in play". As Mark McCormack once said, "Borg might break his leg, but Wimbledon can't." Popularity can be directly related to the celebrity's performance and visibility in any playing arena.

A company betting big bucks on stars does run the risk of the endorsement backfiring. Contractual obligations might save money but the loss in the perception game can be infinite. Want to check out how many brands are knocking at Michael Jackson's door today?

An invaluable benefit from celeb endorsements is the public relation opportunities. When two colossal entities, the brand and the star, embrace each other, the media is never far away.

In this age of celebrity obsession, every public activity of the celeb is news. What they say, talk, wear, eat, drink and how they behave is always great copy. Signing up is news, advertisements is news, ground activity is news, breaking up is news.

Like the mind, celeb endorsements are a "powerful tool" "" the important factor is how it's utilised.

Kamlesh Pandey,
Creative Director,
Rediffusion DY&R

Celebrities cannot be a substitute for a powerful creative idea. To me, they signal, at worst, the bankruptcy of a creative mind, and, at best, a creative menopause. Lazy or overworked copywriters often resort to the shortcut of using a celebrity.

The worst a brand can do is to become a celebrity's fan. Most celebrity-driven ads at present reflect that. You can almost hear the brands giggling like teenage fans in the company of their idol.

It doesn't make economic sense either. Celebrities not only devour the brand (yes, that's what video vampires do) with their larger-than-life shadow, they also eat up a substantial part of the budget. The 30-second TV ad is reduced to a 15-second reminder and the media list shrinks to the point where the so-called celebrity-advantage becomes self-defeating. It is tragic.

Besides, most often, celebrities end up selling themselves more than the brand itself. So why should a client spend a hefty sum to sell a celebrity who does not even need selling? In this sense, celebrities tend to be a liability to the brand.

However, if a celebrity can be used imaginatively, she can be an asset. For example, for the launch of a brand that doesn't have a clear or credible USP, association with a celebrity can get instant recognition. Or fun products, which do not demand credibility or need to deliver value-for-money, may benefit from celebrity endorsements.

The best way, therefore, to use a celebrity is to use him in the service of the product, and not vice versa. Else, if the celebrity is used as his real self, the product must connect with his real life. Or, if the celebrity is used as a model, the power and persona of the celebrity should be used in the service of the product.

For instance, Eveready batteries will soon be launching three TV ads with Amitabh Bachchan. He is portrayed as a cool dude in the ad for high-end batteries, middle-end batteries and for the torches that target small towns and villages. In all of these, Bachchan appears as himself.

Back in the 1970s, Raj Babbar was the brand ambassador for cigarette brand Red & White. This was long before he became a star and was offered the part simply because he had the looks of the man on the street. The concept was a common do-gooder who rewards himself with his favourite cigarette.

With an evocative line Hum Red & White peene walon ki baat hi kuchh aur hai (there's something different about us who smoke Red & White), an unknown brand was lifted to stardom. So was Babbar.

The irony is later it led to a misconception that the brand is star-driven, and hence, two other stars, Jackie Shroff and Akshay Kumar, were roped in. The result: Red & White brand is still trying to recover from the attack of its video vampires.

Vijay Chandorikar,
Automotive Consultant,
Only Solutnz (former Commercial Director, Fiat India)

If we look at the recent development in brand building and marketing of products, one aspect comes out strongly "" everyone who is someone, is associated with marketing a product or service. Getting a known name to be associated with one's product seems to be in vogue and as is quite often in our country, follows a herd mentality.

The theoretical argument in favour of such endorsements is the logic (yet to be tested via research "" at least in India) that the qualities associated with the celebrity are associated with the endorsed product and that the product, therefore, leap-frogs in consumers' minds.

While the logic in the theory is sound, one needs to acknowledge that the impact of such endorsements is unlikely to be sustainable on all brand categories and in all stages of the brand's life cycle.

Brand strategy varies depending on whether the brand is a functional one, an image brand or an experiential brand. Functional brands depend heavily on the performance of the product itself.

Hence, any association with a celebrity without the corresponding product performance will not be sustainable. Often, seemingly mundane (or "wannabe") products try to gain shelf space just by attaching a celebrity. They fail miserably.

Image brands "" like soaps, soft drinks and cigarettes "" however, are difficult to distinguish on product features. Such brands benefit from celebrity endorsement because it helps in distinguishing the products at an emotional level. Lux, for example, has been following a consistent strategy of using the latest Bollywood queen as an endorser.

The issue facing the brand builder is to explain to the client that just engaging the services of a "brand ambassador" is not enough. There is still a host of activities that needs to be done to ensure that the impact of the celebrity is felt across the buying population. A case in point is Maruti's Versa, which, despite having a strong celebrity endorsement, did not take off.

The choice of the celebrity is critical here. He should have high recognition, and bring a positive effect to the product. Sports personalities have been traditionally used to endorse athletic products (Nike, Adidas, Reebok et al), beverages (Pepsi, Coke) and apparel (Mayur Suiting).

However, as said earlier, all the above brands are image-brands. One does remember the usage of Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev to advertise Palmolive shaving cream. But since that product category is functional, the impact of such endorsements is highly dependent on the product's performance.

Using celebrities during the launch phase of an image product has traditionally enjoyed a high success rate. However, as the product matures, the impact of the personality wanes. One company that has managed to use celebrity endorsement successfully in recent times is Hyundai.

The launch with Shah Rukh Khan was a neat way of establishing the Hyundai name (hitherto unknown) in India. Having established the name, the celebrity was then used only during the launch of new versions or products (Zip Drive, 1.1 Santro etc). At the same time, the company consciously avoided the usage of the celebrity during the launch of other products from their stable.

Fiat, on the other hand, used Sachin Tendulkar to power launch its brand Palio. The usage of a celebrity at that time was mainly to gain rapid recognition and create a positive image around the company that hitherto was involved in very low volume products. However, the initial euphoria, which lasted almost a year, could not be sustained for a variety of internal and external factors.

The road to celebrity endorsement is not without pitfalls. Consistency of the performance of the celebrity is in question here "" remember the hurried removal of the Thums Up campaign and how certain cricket stars vanished from hoardings after the match-fixing scandals?

Another issue is celebrity exposure and fatigue. The same personality endorsing a range of suit material, a bank, a soft drink, a polio-pulse programme, a paint company and an ayurvedic health potion, leads to sheer confusion in consumers' minds. In a country that has always been enamoured by personalities and clans, it may be a good strategy to use brand personalities to build rapid recognition, but it's not always a sustainable model.

Sanjay Purohit,
General Manager, Marketing,
Cadbury India

In a country with a dearth of heroes and icons, our few national icons tend to assume larger-than-life proportions. For a marketer, in a world of fragmented media, high clutter and minute-short attention spans, the single most important for use of celebrity endorsements in brand strategy is the high impact and notice-ability they offer.

After the negative impact of the worm-infestation controversy, when Cadbury India wanted to get the message of new strengthened packaging across to consumers, the quickest way was to use a celebrity capable of drawing attention to the message. And who better than Amitabh Bachchan, the biggest celebrity of them all? In his absence, arguably, this task would have taken far more time to percolate across the country.

So, there is no denying that celebrity endorsement in brand building works, and works effectively. And that is why Cadbury has had a spate of celebrity endorsements over the past few years.

But not all such endorsements work. The sole use of a celebrity cannot be the panacea for all branding issues, especially in the case of multiple brand endorsements by the same celebrity. It is critical then to make the brand-celebrity partnership effective.

There clearly needs to be a method to the madness in using celebrities. First, the use of a celebrity cannot be at the cost of the basic tenets of effective communication "" sound strategy, a compelling story to be told and most importantly, the need to make the consumer act on the communication. Too often, marketers use the crutch of a celebrity when they are completely bereft of ideas.

Second, considerable thought needs to be given to the precise value addition that the star brings to the communication idea, besides sheer presence. It is when the unique differentiator of the star is completely woven into the execution of the communication, that the effectiveness of the idea is enhanced manifold. One cannot imagine the Thanda Matlab Coca-Cola campaign without Aamir Khan.

Third, the most effective celebrity endorsements occur when both brand and celebrity have equal status in the relationship. Let me illustrate the point with two contrasting examples.

Over the years, non-celebrity based advertising had built a sharply etched personality for brand Perk "" fun, mischievous, bubbly and simply "perky". The marriage then, in 2003, with one of the original Perk models, Preity Zinta, who embodied very similar values, has only further strengthened the brand's imagery.

However, when the star's imagery is used to etch a personality for a brand from scratch, there is a strong issue of the star overshadowing the brand itself. Nerolac and Reid and Taylor run the danger of being known as the Bachchan-wallah paint or suiting. The identity of the brand can be subsumed by that of the star.

Fourth, even while most celebrity endorsements come at a fair expense (or investment), the expense itself must never be at the cost of media weights. Inadequate exposure will always lead to inadequate results out of the partnership.

Finally, the most effective celebrity endorsements occur when there is a degree of exclusivity and mystery attached. Indiscriminate endorsements do tend to erode the value of the partnership.

Alas, in an age when there is so much demand for those few national icons capable of affecting sales of a brand on their own, this exclusivity only remains a pipedream. The onus on the marketer, therefore, to be even more clear about brand strategy, is higher.

(The views expressed here are personal)