Description
An entrepreneur celebrity needs to strategize on certain aspects for successful positioning of himself. He has to create his own Marketing Mix along with his image management consultancy firm based on the strategies discussed in the PDF.
ENTREPRENEUR ENDORSER
INTRODUCTION One approving nod from a famous face can translate into millions in brand sales. Perhaps that’s why the world over, companies have been using stars to endorse everything, from food to food chains, from soft and hard drinks to health drinks, from clothes and accessories to cars. Even political parties are awestruck by the charisma of stars. Such is the magnetism of celebrities in this country that in the recent general elections, major political parties fielded a record number of film stars and cricketers to contest from important constituencies around the country. Several benefits of using celebrities, key among them are building credibility, fostering trust and drawing attention, any or all of which can translate into higher brand sales. Celebrity endorsements work best when the celebrity is not introducing the brand. When the product already has a strong identity and a USP that is well established, then a celebrity can come in and give the brand an added fillip and generate some more interest vale. What is of paramount importance is to find a complete fit between values of the brand and the values of the celebrity. One needs to create a unique situation or story that links the celebrity to the products. Celebrities can create interest-whether that interest converts into sales depends on various factors such as brand-celebrity disconnect, improper positioning, clutter of celebrities or even product life cycle. But in the current dynamic market environment all the aforesaid mantras might not necessarily work. Customers have become so much demanding that they want something new every time. Hence we see that sometimes which is considered very different and weird works in the market. When you think of Amitabh Bachchan, Sachin Tendulkar, Ritu Kumar, Mother Teresa and Veerappan, certain associations and benefits immediately come to mind. These associations could be weak, negative or strong. In case of Osama bin laden or Veerapan, these associations are negative. In case of Armani or Ritu Kumar these associations are unique and positive and are combined with relevant and unique benefits, thus making them brand in themselves. The same rule that applies to successful products and brands also apply to successful individual-led brands. A person can establish himself or herself as a strong brand by offering his or her target consumers a set of unique, relevant and motivating associations and reasons to buy. Establishing themselves as brand names ensures easy and often, instant recognition, differentiation from competition and enables them to command a higher value for a longer duration from their target consumers.
Traditionally, marketers have been using certain guidelines for any kind of product category. Those set commandments can be laid down as follows: How to develop a new and fresh idea1. Study category advertising in order to rule out what’s already being done. 2. Understand popular trends across categories. 3. If the brand has a unique rational differentiator or a performance attribute that must be demonstrated, then it should be done creatively and effectively. 4. Try and make even the most powerful and creative product demo as entertaining as possible or where’s the point of opportunity to see. 5. Deliver the brand experience through more and more innovative media placement and channels. But these have become so set that nobody seems to follow them rigidly. In a market where every minute something new takes place along with an addition in the expectations of the consumers, it has become more of a necessity than a challenge to create something unique, which can convert into an edge over the competitors.
Celebrity endorsements were considered to be a marketing warfare tool in the initial years but has now become as necessary and omnipresent as advertising itself. Today celebrities are managing themselves as a business. Hence a more apt word would be “Entrepreneur Endorser”. An entrepreneur celebrity needs to strategize on certain aspects for successful positioning of himself. He has to create his own Marketing Mix along with his image management consultancy firm based on the following strategies: 1. AGE CAGE: many celebrities today are joining the bandwagon of endorsement without matching their age with the brand audience age and it appeal. They need to understand that due to their age boundary their brand set for consideration would also get limited. So, whichever brand they target for themselves has to match their age limit. For example, Grasim also tried to revamp its positioning with distribution, product, design and development but no celebrity change in celebrity. They could not bring about the required effect, as young consumers were unable to identify with Tiger Pataudi and Sharmila Tagore-the traditional brand ambassadors of the Grasim Gwalior brand. They had a series of ads with the royal duo passing on the Gwalior baton to young, effervescent Saif Ali Khan, a couple of years back. But the advertising could not connect to the core target. But on the other hand, we have a recent example of perfect fit of celebrity age and brand appeal. Dabur stands for strength, reliability, has been there for long and still going strong feeling which exactly fits with Amitabh Bachchan’s image. Hence endorsement has worked both for the company in higher recall and sales and for the ambassador as well.
2. BRAND ONESELF- Branding is an act of creation, the act of conceiving benefits beyond the product. A brand is a product, organization or a “persona” with a unique set of associations attached to it. Taking ‘Boost’ as an example, outlining the growth of ‘Boost’ as a brand, from when it was launched by the makers of ‘Horlicks’, to the present when it commands a premium in the market. The transformation of the brand from Kapil Dev through Sachin to Sehwag. One of the most important things to realize is that the process of branding is continuous and dose not happen in knee-jerk steps. Similarly the celebrity entrepreneur should himself work on building a brand of his own. The ways to achieve this are by performing well in his field, creating a unique image of his own, which no one has, etc. proving his expertise in his own area will give him certain leverage and demanding position in the market. For example, Sachin Tendulkar has made a name for himself by giving excellent performance in his field of work. This helps the brands, to which he gets associated with, gets a performance driven image and is able to do well in the market. Example Fardeen Khan stands for style and fashion, which is why, endorses Provogue, which is a fashionable shirts wear. On performance level, he might not have many hits, but still he stands for looks, sophistication, panache and hence endorses such brands. 3. MANAGE BRAND EQUITY- The love and admiration which a brand inspires is simultaneously a challenge because the more people admire you the more they will expect and demand. Just ask Sachin Tendulkar what this means as millions of people have linked their dreams and hopes to this diminutive genius. Hence a celebrity has to consistently work on performance and deliver his or her best throughout so as to maintain the brand credibility, which he has built for himself. An entrepreneur endorser also needs to understand the sources of his own brand equity and constantly work on them. Sources namely his own brand image, brand awareness, brand association, brand loyalty, brand salience, brand resonance, brand recall, brand recognition, etc have to be created and then maintained through performance and communication. 4. PERCEPTUAL MAPPING- a celebrity and his image management firm need to undertake a perceptual mapping exercise before they target brands to be endorsed by the celebrity. In this the celebrity would try to analyze consumer’s perceptions of him as compared to other celebrities belonging to his cadre or category. For example, Shahrukh Khan would try to analyze his position in the minds of consumer’s vis-à-vis Hrithik Roshan, Saif Ali Khan, Aamir Khan, and Vivek Oberoi. Akshay Kumar would compare with Sunny Deol, Salman Khan, Sunil Shetty and Sanjay Dutt. Mapping can be done by considering two parameters, which are critical for any celebrity’s success and compare his category competitors on them. Depending upon his position and ideal position according to the consumers, he should strategize his future moves and endorsements.
Below is an example of perceptual mapping of Shahrukh Khan with his immediate competitors. Performer Shahrukh Khan Hrithik Roshan Mass Appeal Vivek Oberoi Aamir Khan
Saif Ali Khan Nicher
Struggler
5. PERFECT FIT- an entrepreneur celebrity in order to succeed has to choose those brands only where there is a clear fit between the values that he or she stands for and the value of the brand. For example, Aishwarya Rai for Beauty products, Sachin Tendulkar with Sports products. There has to exist a correlation between the expertise of the celebrity and the brand positioning. The celebrity should be known to have credibility in the category for which he is endorsing. A celebrity should always try to foresee long term association with brands whether the consumer would be able to relate him to that product category or brand or not. Only then both of them can benefit from each other. In recent times, mind-boggling sums have been splurged on celebrity advertising without anyone having a clue as to their benefits Palio, from Fiats’s stable, reported brisk sales initially, perhaps buoyed by endorsement from the cricketing icon Sachin Tendulkar, but the momentum seems to have fizzle outgoing by newspaper reports which shows that the impact of celebrity is ephemeral and wears off sooner than later when the die-hard aficionados of the celebrity have patronized the ware sold by their heartthrob. The mapping of celebrity with the brand image should be such that it should become immortal. A classic example is association of Marlin Monroe with beauty. Today, even after years of her death she is remembered as a beauty symbol and can endorse anything that is related with it. Hence, right segmentation + right differentiation = right positioning.
It is very important to have a fit between the endorser and the brand. For example, after beverages, colas, tyres and cars, master-blaster Sachin Tendulkar is now the brand ambassador for sports channels ESPN and Star Sports. According to managing director of ESPN, “the relationship is much beyond being a brand ambassador. Sachin is an icon while ESPN and star sports represent excellence in sports broadcasting. It is a natural fit.” Well if is surely in response to SET max signing on Kapil Dev to differentiate them from one another. Adidas has been able to gain 25-20 percent share of the 250 crore-premium footwear market with best advertising icons in Sachin Tendulkar, Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupati. But apart from this, the brand has ‘considerable’ strength in apparel, cutting edge technology, a spruced up retail network. Other ‘grassroots work’ that Adidas says it is doing includes establishing long drawn associations and promotions with sporting events such as tennis and cricket at various levels. Hence any celebrity entrepreneur needs to first evaluate his expertise area, his own image, what associations he stands for. Then move onto evaluating which brands would closest to his own image and positioning. And then finally target those brands and create a win-win situation for both. 6. GEOGRAPHIC ORIENTATION- Geographic orientation of celebrities is again a matter to be looked into by corporates existing at national and international levels. For example Airtel signed up film personalities Kareena Kapoor and Shah Rukh Khan and cricketer Saurav Ganguly for its pre-paid cellular card in the northern markets. Similarly, Tamil star Madhavan endorsed the brand in Chennai and in the rest of Tamil Nadu. According to company officials “Magic is a youth brand, and all these celebrities depict exuberance and confidence to succeed, which are in synergy with the core values of the product. But even more important for the celebrity to gauge is whether he has a regional appeal, a national one or an international one. Then he needs to target those companies and brands where he would be able to leverage maximum association. For example, Amitabh Bachchan, Sachin Tendulkar, Shahrukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai are some market mavens who have national or even international orientation and can endorse any brand anywhere. But most of the celebrities have limited orientation and hence should strategize accordingly. 7. CELEBRITY DILUTION- Another problem that has come up is that celebrities endorsing a host of brands tend to ambush the real sponsors of a particular event. For example, in a recent controversy between the cricketers and the ICC, the sponsors of the ICC tournament i.e. Samsung have used a clause to prevent the host of brands that currently use players as endorsers from ‘ambushing’ the main sponsors of the tournament. The ICC clause said that players cannot endorse any other brands a month before the ICC Champions Trophy and for a month after as well. Hence celebrities should not go on an endorsing spree as this can dilute the values, which they stand for
along with reducing their market value both quantitatively and qualitatively. Therefore they should pick and carefully choose the brands to be endorsed by them. Even corporates have a lesson to be learnt through this. Even in tremendous competition, it would not be always feasible to strike back with a celebrity to combat competitor’s celebrity. While MRF has achieved maximum visibility by signing on high profile brand ambassador such as Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara, Apollo Tyres is concentrating on striking strategic alliances with Castrol, BPCL, and Cummins to create awareness among its target consumers. Similar strategy has been adopted by Hutch and Idea to combat Airtel’s celebrities. 8. STORY WORRY- A key definition of ‘creativity’ in advertising is the ability to come up with powerful concepts that are relevantly and strikingly different enough to capture attention, cut across media clutter and are remembered by the viewing audience. Whatever happened to brand differentiation? In case of celebrity advertising, there is a big question mark about credulousness in many cases. What, for example, is Govinda doing in a detergent commercial? Of course, no doubt the ready defence would be ‘pure entertainment’! Which is all very well providing that procuring such expensive entertainment value leads to an increase in not just brand recall but sales and market share as well. However the big the celebrity and the brand are, they will never be able to build that affect in the market if the theme or story in the advertising is ineffective. There had been innumerable examples of campaigns with good celebrities and known brands going haywire. For example, Cyrus Broacha of MTV endorsing Medimix soap among others. Hence it is important for the celebrity entrepreneur to work in close coordination with the advertising agency so that he can monitor the story in which the brand would be fabricated with him. Under practical circumstance this is not very much possible, but it is for the celebrities benefit to involve him and avoid any kind of loss to his image. 9. CATEGORY MANAGEMENT- Use of celebrities may just be unavoidable in categories such as soft drinks since celebrities are an excellent endorsement for a category and brand that fulfill lifestyle aspirations through image associations. And perhaps one has no recourse but to adopt this route if the competition is occupying such as high ground, especially in a country like India which is passionate about movies and cricket to the exclusion of anything else. At best one can only keep working towards outshining the competition in the way the celebrities are used. For instance, one has yet to see any attempt to inject more credibility into celebrity consumption of the brand, say even showing the celebrity consuming the drink during TV interviews or during the myriad number of live events and shows that the said celebrities participate in (for example Hrithik Roshan with Coke in movie Yaadein). Hence it is for the entrepreneur to decide the category of products that he think he will gel with perfectly. Like in India not many celebrities have had success in endorsing automobiles leaving alone an exceptional case of Shahrukh Khan for Santro, initial rush
for Fiat Palio because of Sachin Tendulkar. Majority of success has been seen only in Fmcg, Consumer durables, lifestyle products. So every celebrity entrepreneur needs to evaluate the market pulse and then endorse accordingly depending on what works for which categories. Do endorsements sell automobiles? Fiat Palio/Sachin Tendulkar. Maruti Versa/Bachchans. Hero Honda/Saurav Ganguly and Hrithik Roshan. Kinetic/Kapil Dev. Can’t think of any other, but on the other hand, one can recall the absolutely amazed look from the dias when a reporter asked Ratan Tata, at the launch of the Tata Indica years ago, whether they were going to use any celebrity endorsements. Why would we, this is a good car we are selling, queried somebody from the Tatas in return, and in some ways, that said it all. So a question needs to be answered, do you think endorsements really influence buying patterns? Or are we as increasingly savvy buyers now able to comprehend that an endorsement simply pads up the price? Celebrity advertising, whether for a national brand or a regional brand in FMCG categories has a clear cut goal of imitating trials and the product (both in terms of proportion and consumer experience) has to be superior to other offerings to ensure those who try out the brand stay with it. The choice for which celebrity to be considered largely depends on the product category itself. According to a study, Shahrukh Khan is the most versatile celebrity endorser. Customers related him with insurance. Branded clothing and banking, none of which he currently endorses. He was also chosen as the male celebrity who evokes the highest degree of association for perfumes and watches. The study also said that they trusted Amitabh Bachchan for categories like insurance and banking. In categories such as cold drinks Shahrukh Khan and Sachin Tendulkar are viewed as being more suitable. Aishwarya Rai tops charts for perfumes and watches whereas Hrithik Roshan is related to motorcycles. But when it comes to cars, all the three, Shahrukh Khan, Sachin Tendulkar and Bachchan are rated equally. 10. PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL- the issue to be considered here is that of performance delivery of the celebrity and the brand. Either of them could suffer because of the other. It may sometimes happen that even after the whiz kids of the agency have done a tremendous job, the client turned out to be disappointer. A brand name “Home Trade” was embedded in the neurons of crores of people, who were too dumb to ask what the ad’s product was. Brand mattered more than the stuff and when stars were endorsing a name, it had to be good. Another raging controversy over celebrity endorsements has raised another issue-what happens when sports or film stars signed on by corporates for lucrative endorsement deal don’t perform-professionally. For example, Pepsi India has had endorsers such as Kajol, who has all but retired from active moviedom, Madhavan who failed to make waves in Bollywood, and TV actor Amar Upadhyay who seems to have vanished from the telly. Both the parties quote different reasons for this. Pepsi officials say that these stars are signed before they hit peak stardom because their endorsement deals are cheaper and
corporates want to catch them young. Whereas ad professionals say that sometimes endorsement deals don’t go according to expectations and investments go down the drain. Even coca cola’s contracts with J.Srinath, Robin Singh, Saif Ali Khan and Twinkle Khanna have since expired, as they did not attain great heights in their respective careers. Virender Sehwag is the only current cricketer as a coke endorser while Sunil Gavaskar is the only ex-celebrity on board. It is a nightmare for any brand to be linked with a brand ambassador who is tainted and it becomes very difficult for brands to continue their association. And, from the brand ambassador’s point of view, subsequent endorsement deals could be hard to come by. Recent cases are of top Australian cricketer Shane Warne testing positive for consuming banned substances and his subsequent withdrawal from the event may have repercussions on his sponsorship deals. Last year, coca-cola India had dumped bollywood star Salman Khan as the key brand endorser for Thumsup after he was named in a couple of accident cases. Pitfalls of celebrity advertising are two pronged. One where the company gets into problem like in the case of Home trade who signed on Sachin Tendulkar, Hrithik Roshan and Shahrukh Khan. And the other where celebrities get involved with some scam. We have many cases in hand for this. The recent one is the case of J.Hampstead Suitings using South African cricketers. The betting scam ensued and company had to scrap the ads. Similarly the case of Ajay Jadeja and Kingfisher and of course Salman Khan who was not used in ads for a time when his black buck shooting case was making headlines. So the question, which arises here, is that will there be an adverse rub-off in each of the cases on the innocent party. In this context a very relevant case can be discussed, that of Home Trade. HOME TRADE CASE STUDY- this particular organization is alleged to have cheated both its lenders and customers and has now closed down in a flurry of bad publicity. It was an e-broking service firm and many people lost their money. It is possible to argue that one reason for the patronage of Home Trade was the fact that it was seemingly endorsed by such well-known people. From a legal point of view, the model is not responsible for the product. It is also possible that neither of the brand endorsers actually knew much about the product they were endorsing. So the important point here is that, if you are a celebrity today, then it is important for you to first investigate and understand the status and the standing of the brand being advertised and the company behind the brand. So it is not enough, any more, to know the financial implications of a sponsorship. It is important to know whether one is lending one’s fame to a purpose that will not affect the fortunes of others. It can be concluded that the advertisement gave legitimacy to the enterprise, inspite of the fact that those who featured in it actually did not endorse the brand.
11. MORAL RESPONSIBILITY- Unfortunately, the Home Trade ads are no exception since the celebrities who appear in all sorts of ads for money are luring gullible public into buying trash. It is well known fact that film stars appearing in ads for cosmetics and toiletries never even touch them, let alone use them. The celebrities should never betray the confidence and trust the public has in them. A celebrity cannot escape moral responsibility by saying that he only appeared in the ad and did not endorse the product. As far as the general public is concerned both are the same. To say that they are concerned only with raking in the moolah and not responsible for anything else is the height of hypocrisy. In recent outburst against the Indian cricket team’s performance is a lesson for marketers not to take celebrity endorsement for granted. Cricket is a religion in India. It is practiced faithfully by almost all Indians irrespective of their sex, color, caste, creed and status. It has been seen that public memory is short. A very important consumer insight that has emerged is that they would not tolerate the decline and fall of their highly paid gladiators in international tournaments. An opinion conducted by Aaj Tak revealed that 87 percent of the respondents emphatically stated that they would not buy products promoted by cricketers. This consumer activism should be carefully borne in mind by marketers who should not forget that there was an open ire that cricketers were more interested in endorsing products than playing the game. The spate of advertising with cricketing celebrities has obviously not gone unnoticed. The point being made is that celebrity endorsement is no longer a joy ride all the way to the bank. With alarmingly strong and immediate consumer reactions, this route is not something to be taken for granted. STORY OF CORPORATE ENTREPRENEUR CELEBRITY Face that is a brand can be sometimes different from celebrities who endorse brands. For example, students across leading management institutes overwhelmingly chose N.R Narayan Murthy of Infosys as the business leader they admired most, for the second year in a row. And guess why, no surprise here:- “Leadership style, vision, entrepreneurial spirit and ethics”. Branding is all about consistency, coherence and long-term thinking and yes-corporate leaders can and will brands in their own right. There have been people before Narayana Murthy like Jack Welch of GE, Richard Branson of Virgin Atlantic and Anita Roddick of Body Shop who have been the faces of the organizations they headed, making their organization the “Company of Choice” to customers, employees and investors. So, not just products but even organizations can have faces, which endorse for organization values and performance. Hence we see if all the above strategies fit with the corporate entrepreneur who has built up the company itself, then there can be no better endorser that the leader himself. This not only reinforces the values of the enterprise but also gives direction and focus to the overall organization.
So the question to ponder over is that who is the face of your company to the external world. CONCLUSION Getting celebrities to endorse a brand does help in creating a sustained presence in the market, but the brands should have a long-term strategy in place. In an environment cluttered with several kinds of appeals, celebrity advertising is being used for national brands. More recently, there is a growing usage of regional celebrities to appeal to regional segments-Coke; Vim and a regional brand such as Jeeva soap are examples. While clear-cut data and the effectiveness of these kinds of celebrity appeals are hard to obtain, it may be worthwhile to analyze how certain considerations could help marketers in such strategies. Celebrity usage for a new brand should necessarily have a long-term strategy in place before celebrity route is taken. It need not be a freebie-it could be a well thought out plan, which adds value to the brand association. Such planning ensures that the initial mileage derived from the celebrity used (in terms of brand trials) is not wasted. Problem in using celebrity by a brand in the consumer durable category becomes much more complex as consumers may not invest a fortune in an expensive durable simply because celebrities endorse a brand. Exceptional cases may be Santro and Palio because it itself is a ‘niche’ strategy. Usage of celebrity in the case of Palio, which is reported to have registered a rise in sales after the introduction of the famous and record creating cricket celebrity, it had revamped the product offering in an attempt to enhance the value proposition of the offering. A durable would do well to choose a celebrity who has an ‘expert association’ with the product usage-a microwave using a celebrity known for her expertise in cuisine. A washing machine brand using a cricket celebrity would offer little advantage unless he has a charismatic presence in a specific region.
doc_272386777.pdf
An entrepreneur celebrity needs to strategize on certain aspects for successful positioning of himself. He has to create his own Marketing Mix along with his image management consultancy firm based on the strategies discussed in the PDF.
ENTREPRENEUR ENDORSER
INTRODUCTION One approving nod from a famous face can translate into millions in brand sales. Perhaps that’s why the world over, companies have been using stars to endorse everything, from food to food chains, from soft and hard drinks to health drinks, from clothes and accessories to cars. Even political parties are awestruck by the charisma of stars. Such is the magnetism of celebrities in this country that in the recent general elections, major political parties fielded a record number of film stars and cricketers to contest from important constituencies around the country. Several benefits of using celebrities, key among them are building credibility, fostering trust and drawing attention, any or all of which can translate into higher brand sales. Celebrity endorsements work best when the celebrity is not introducing the brand. When the product already has a strong identity and a USP that is well established, then a celebrity can come in and give the brand an added fillip and generate some more interest vale. What is of paramount importance is to find a complete fit between values of the brand and the values of the celebrity. One needs to create a unique situation or story that links the celebrity to the products. Celebrities can create interest-whether that interest converts into sales depends on various factors such as brand-celebrity disconnect, improper positioning, clutter of celebrities or even product life cycle. But in the current dynamic market environment all the aforesaid mantras might not necessarily work. Customers have become so much demanding that they want something new every time. Hence we see that sometimes which is considered very different and weird works in the market. When you think of Amitabh Bachchan, Sachin Tendulkar, Ritu Kumar, Mother Teresa and Veerappan, certain associations and benefits immediately come to mind. These associations could be weak, negative or strong. In case of Osama bin laden or Veerapan, these associations are negative. In case of Armani or Ritu Kumar these associations are unique and positive and are combined with relevant and unique benefits, thus making them brand in themselves. The same rule that applies to successful products and brands also apply to successful individual-led brands. A person can establish himself or herself as a strong brand by offering his or her target consumers a set of unique, relevant and motivating associations and reasons to buy. Establishing themselves as brand names ensures easy and often, instant recognition, differentiation from competition and enables them to command a higher value for a longer duration from their target consumers.
Traditionally, marketers have been using certain guidelines for any kind of product category. Those set commandments can be laid down as follows: How to develop a new and fresh idea1. Study category advertising in order to rule out what’s already being done. 2. Understand popular trends across categories. 3. If the brand has a unique rational differentiator or a performance attribute that must be demonstrated, then it should be done creatively and effectively. 4. Try and make even the most powerful and creative product demo as entertaining as possible or where’s the point of opportunity to see. 5. Deliver the brand experience through more and more innovative media placement and channels. But these have become so set that nobody seems to follow them rigidly. In a market where every minute something new takes place along with an addition in the expectations of the consumers, it has become more of a necessity than a challenge to create something unique, which can convert into an edge over the competitors.
Celebrity endorsements were considered to be a marketing warfare tool in the initial years but has now become as necessary and omnipresent as advertising itself. Today celebrities are managing themselves as a business. Hence a more apt word would be “Entrepreneur Endorser”. An entrepreneur celebrity needs to strategize on certain aspects for successful positioning of himself. He has to create his own Marketing Mix along with his image management consultancy firm based on the following strategies: 1. AGE CAGE: many celebrities today are joining the bandwagon of endorsement without matching their age with the brand audience age and it appeal. They need to understand that due to their age boundary their brand set for consideration would also get limited. So, whichever brand they target for themselves has to match their age limit. For example, Grasim also tried to revamp its positioning with distribution, product, design and development but no celebrity change in celebrity. They could not bring about the required effect, as young consumers were unable to identify with Tiger Pataudi and Sharmila Tagore-the traditional brand ambassadors of the Grasim Gwalior brand. They had a series of ads with the royal duo passing on the Gwalior baton to young, effervescent Saif Ali Khan, a couple of years back. But the advertising could not connect to the core target. But on the other hand, we have a recent example of perfect fit of celebrity age and brand appeal. Dabur stands for strength, reliability, has been there for long and still going strong feeling which exactly fits with Amitabh Bachchan’s image. Hence endorsement has worked both for the company in higher recall and sales and for the ambassador as well.
2. BRAND ONESELF- Branding is an act of creation, the act of conceiving benefits beyond the product. A brand is a product, organization or a “persona” with a unique set of associations attached to it. Taking ‘Boost’ as an example, outlining the growth of ‘Boost’ as a brand, from when it was launched by the makers of ‘Horlicks’, to the present when it commands a premium in the market. The transformation of the brand from Kapil Dev through Sachin to Sehwag. One of the most important things to realize is that the process of branding is continuous and dose not happen in knee-jerk steps. Similarly the celebrity entrepreneur should himself work on building a brand of his own. The ways to achieve this are by performing well in his field, creating a unique image of his own, which no one has, etc. proving his expertise in his own area will give him certain leverage and demanding position in the market. For example, Sachin Tendulkar has made a name for himself by giving excellent performance in his field of work. This helps the brands, to which he gets associated with, gets a performance driven image and is able to do well in the market. Example Fardeen Khan stands for style and fashion, which is why, endorses Provogue, which is a fashionable shirts wear. On performance level, he might not have many hits, but still he stands for looks, sophistication, panache and hence endorses such brands. 3. MANAGE BRAND EQUITY- The love and admiration which a brand inspires is simultaneously a challenge because the more people admire you the more they will expect and demand. Just ask Sachin Tendulkar what this means as millions of people have linked their dreams and hopes to this diminutive genius. Hence a celebrity has to consistently work on performance and deliver his or her best throughout so as to maintain the brand credibility, which he has built for himself. An entrepreneur endorser also needs to understand the sources of his own brand equity and constantly work on them. Sources namely his own brand image, brand awareness, brand association, brand loyalty, brand salience, brand resonance, brand recall, brand recognition, etc have to be created and then maintained through performance and communication. 4. PERCEPTUAL MAPPING- a celebrity and his image management firm need to undertake a perceptual mapping exercise before they target brands to be endorsed by the celebrity. In this the celebrity would try to analyze consumer’s perceptions of him as compared to other celebrities belonging to his cadre or category. For example, Shahrukh Khan would try to analyze his position in the minds of consumer’s vis-à-vis Hrithik Roshan, Saif Ali Khan, Aamir Khan, and Vivek Oberoi. Akshay Kumar would compare with Sunny Deol, Salman Khan, Sunil Shetty and Sanjay Dutt. Mapping can be done by considering two parameters, which are critical for any celebrity’s success and compare his category competitors on them. Depending upon his position and ideal position according to the consumers, he should strategize his future moves and endorsements.
Below is an example of perceptual mapping of Shahrukh Khan with his immediate competitors. Performer Shahrukh Khan Hrithik Roshan Mass Appeal Vivek Oberoi Aamir Khan
Saif Ali Khan Nicher
Struggler
5. PERFECT FIT- an entrepreneur celebrity in order to succeed has to choose those brands only where there is a clear fit between the values that he or she stands for and the value of the brand. For example, Aishwarya Rai for Beauty products, Sachin Tendulkar with Sports products. There has to exist a correlation between the expertise of the celebrity and the brand positioning. The celebrity should be known to have credibility in the category for which he is endorsing. A celebrity should always try to foresee long term association with brands whether the consumer would be able to relate him to that product category or brand or not. Only then both of them can benefit from each other. In recent times, mind-boggling sums have been splurged on celebrity advertising without anyone having a clue as to their benefits Palio, from Fiats’s stable, reported brisk sales initially, perhaps buoyed by endorsement from the cricketing icon Sachin Tendulkar, but the momentum seems to have fizzle outgoing by newspaper reports which shows that the impact of celebrity is ephemeral and wears off sooner than later when the die-hard aficionados of the celebrity have patronized the ware sold by their heartthrob. The mapping of celebrity with the brand image should be such that it should become immortal. A classic example is association of Marlin Monroe with beauty. Today, even after years of her death she is remembered as a beauty symbol and can endorse anything that is related with it. Hence, right segmentation + right differentiation = right positioning.
It is very important to have a fit between the endorser and the brand. For example, after beverages, colas, tyres and cars, master-blaster Sachin Tendulkar is now the brand ambassador for sports channels ESPN and Star Sports. According to managing director of ESPN, “the relationship is much beyond being a brand ambassador. Sachin is an icon while ESPN and star sports represent excellence in sports broadcasting. It is a natural fit.” Well if is surely in response to SET max signing on Kapil Dev to differentiate them from one another. Adidas has been able to gain 25-20 percent share of the 250 crore-premium footwear market with best advertising icons in Sachin Tendulkar, Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupati. But apart from this, the brand has ‘considerable’ strength in apparel, cutting edge technology, a spruced up retail network. Other ‘grassroots work’ that Adidas says it is doing includes establishing long drawn associations and promotions with sporting events such as tennis and cricket at various levels. Hence any celebrity entrepreneur needs to first evaluate his expertise area, his own image, what associations he stands for. Then move onto evaluating which brands would closest to his own image and positioning. And then finally target those brands and create a win-win situation for both. 6. GEOGRAPHIC ORIENTATION- Geographic orientation of celebrities is again a matter to be looked into by corporates existing at national and international levels. For example Airtel signed up film personalities Kareena Kapoor and Shah Rukh Khan and cricketer Saurav Ganguly for its pre-paid cellular card in the northern markets. Similarly, Tamil star Madhavan endorsed the brand in Chennai and in the rest of Tamil Nadu. According to company officials “Magic is a youth brand, and all these celebrities depict exuberance and confidence to succeed, which are in synergy with the core values of the product. But even more important for the celebrity to gauge is whether he has a regional appeal, a national one or an international one. Then he needs to target those companies and brands where he would be able to leverage maximum association. For example, Amitabh Bachchan, Sachin Tendulkar, Shahrukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai are some market mavens who have national or even international orientation and can endorse any brand anywhere. But most of the celebrities have limited orientation and hence should strategize accordingly. 7. CELEBRITY DILUTION- Another problem that has come up is that celebrities endorsing a host of brands tend to ambush the real sponsors of a particular event. For example, in a recent controversy between the cricketers and the ICC, the sponsors of the ICC tournament i.e. Samsung have used a clause to prevent the host of brands that currently use players as endorsers from ‘ambushing’ the main sponsors of the tournament. The ICC clause said that players cannot endorse any other brands a month before the ICC Champions Trophy and for a month after as well. Hence celebrities should not go on an endorsing spree as this can dilute the values, which they stand for
along with reducing their market value both quantitatively and qualitatively. Therefore they should pick and carefully choose the brands to be endorsed by them. Even corporates have a lesson to be learnt through this. Even in tremendous competition, it would not be always feasible to strike back with a celebrity to combat competitor’s celebrity. While MRF has achieved maximum visibility by signing on high profile brand ambassador such as Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara, Apollo Tyres is concentrating on striking strategic alliances with Castrol, BPCL, and Cummins to create awareness among its target consumers. Similar strategy has been adopted by Hutch and Idea to combat Airtel’s celebrities. 8. STORY WORRY- A key definition of ‘creativity’ in advertising is the ability to come up with powerful concepts that are relevantly and strikingly different enough to capture attention, cut across media clutter and are remembered by the viewing audience. Whatever happened to brand differentiation? In case of celebrity advertising, there is a big question mark about credulousness in many cases. What, for example, is Govinda doing in a detergent commercial? Of course, no doubt the ready defence would be ‘pure entertainment’! Which is all very well providing that procuring such expensive entertainment value leads to an increase in not just brand recall but sales and market share as well. However the big the celebrity and the brand are, they will never be able to build that affect in the market if the theme or story in the advertising is ineffective. There had been innumerable examples of campaigns with good celebrities and known brands going haywire. For example, Cyrus Broacha of MTV endorsing Medimix soap among others. Hence it is important for the celebrity entrepreneur to work in close coordination with the advertising agency so that he can monitor the story in which the brand would be fabricated with him. Under practical circumstance this is not very much possible, but it is for the celebrities benefit to involve him and avoid any kind of loss to his image. 9. CATEGORY MANAGEMENT- Use of celebrities may just be unavoidable in categories such as soft drinks since celebrities are an excellent endorsement for a category and brand that fulfill lifestyle aspirations through image associations. And perhaps one has no recourse but to adopt this route if the competition is occupying such as high ground, especially in a country like India which is passionate about movies and cricket to the exclusion of anything else. At best one can only keep working towards outshining the competition in the way the celebrities are used. For instance, one has yet to see any attempt to inject more credibility into celebrity consumption of the brand, say even showing the celebrity consuming the drink during TV interviews or during the myriad number of live events and shows that the said celebrities participate in (for example Hrithik Roshan with Coke in movie Yaadein). Hence it is for the entrepreneur to decide the category of products that he think he will gel with perfectly. Like in India not many celebrities have had success in endorsing automobiles leaving alone an exceptional case of Shahrukh Khan for Santro, initial rush
for Fiat Palio because of Sachin Tendulkar. Majority of success has been seen only in Fmcg, Consumer durables, lifestyle products. So every celebrity entrepreneur needs to evaluate the market pulse and then endorse accordingly depending on what works for which categories. Do endorsements sell automobiles? Fiat Palio/Sachin Tendulkar. Maruti Versa/Bachchans. Hero Honda/Saurav Ganguly and Hrithik Roshan. Kinetic/Kapil Dev. Can’t think of any other, but on the other hand, one can recall the absolutely amazed look from the dias when a reporter asked Ratan Tata, at the launch of the Tata Indica years ago, whether they were going to use any celebrity endorsements. Why would we, this is a good car we are selling, queried somebody from the Tatas in return, and in some ways, that said it all. So a question needs to be answered, do you think endorsements really influence buying patterns? Or are we as increasingly savvy buyers now able to comprehend that an endorsement simply pads up the price? Celebrity advertising, whether for a national brand or a regional brand in FMCG categories has a clear cut goal of imitating trials and the product (both in terms of proportion and consumer experience) has to be superior to other offerings to ensure those who try out the brand stay with it. The choice for which celebrity to be considered largely depends on the product category itself. According to a study, Shahrukh Khan is the most versatile celebrity endorser. Customers related him with insurance. Branded clothing and banking, none of which he currently endorses. He was also chosen as the male celebrity who evokes the highest degree of association for perfumes and watches. The study also said that they trusted Amitabh Bachchan for categories like insurance and banking. In categories such as cold drinks Shahrukh Khan and Sachin Tendulkar are viewed as being more suitable. Aishwarya Rai tops charts for perfumes and watches whereas Hrithik Roshan is related to motorcycles. But when it comes to cars, all the three, Shahrukh Khan, Sachin Tendulkar and Bachchan are rated equally. 10. PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL- the issue to be considered here is that of performance delivery of the celebrity and the brand. Either of them could suffer because of the other. It may sometimes happen that even after the whiz kids of the agency have done a tremendous job, the client turned out to be disappointer. A brand name “Home Trade” was embedded in the neurons of crores of people, who were too dumb to ask what the ad’s product was. Brand mattered more than the stuff and when stars were endorsing a name, it had to be good. Another raging controversy over celebrity endorsements has raised another issue-what happens when sports or film stars signed on by corporates for lucrative endorsement deal don’t perform-professionally. For example, Pepsi India has had endorsers such as Kajol, who has all but retired from active moviedom, Madhavan who failed to make waves in Bollywood, and TV actor Amar Upadhyay who seems to have vanished from the telly. Both the parties quote different reasons for this. Pepsi officials say that these stars are signed before they hit peak stardom because their endorsement deals are cheaper and
corporates want to catch them young. Whereas ad professionals say that sometimes endorsement deals don’t go according to expectations and investments go down the drain. Even coca cola’s contracts with J.Srinath, Robin Singh, Saif Ali Khan and Twinkle Khanna have since expired, as they did not attain great heights in their respective careers. Virender Sehwag is the only current cricketer as a coke endorser while Sunil Gavaskar is the only ex-celebrity on board. It is a nightmare for any brand to be linked with a brand ambassador who is tainted and it becomes very difficult for brands to continue their association. And, from the brand ambassador’s point of view, subsequent endorsement deals could be hard to come by. Recent cases are of top Australian cricketer Shane Warne testing positive for consuming banned substances and his subsequent withdrawal from the event may have repercussions on his sponsorship deals. Last year, coca-cola India had dumped bollywood star Salman Khan as the key brand endorser for Thumsup after he was named in a couple of accident cases. Pitfalls of celebrity advertising are two pronged. One where the company gets into problem like in the case of Home trade who signed on Sachin Tendulkar, Hrithik Roshan and Shahrukh Khan. And the other where celebrities get involved with some scam. We have many cases in hand for this. The recent one is the case of J.Hampstead Suitings using South African cricketers. The betting scam ensued and company had to scrap the ads. Similarly the case of Ajay Jadeja and Kingfisher and of course Salman Khan who was not used in ads for a time when his black buck shooting case was making headlines. So the question, which arises here, is that will there be an adverse rub-off in each of the cases on the innocent party. In this context a very relevant case can be discussed, that of Home Trade. HOME TRADE CASE STUDY- this particular organization is alleged to have cheated both its lenders and customers and has now closed down in a flurry of bad publicity. It was an e-broking service firm and many people lost their money. It is possible to argue that one reason for the patronage of Home Trade was the fact that it was seemingly endorsed by such well-known people. From a legal point of view, the model is not responsible for the product. It is also possible that neither of the brand endorsers actually knew much about the product they were endorsing. So the important point here is that, if you are a celebrity today, then it is important for you to first investigate and understand the status and the standing of the brand being advertised and the company behind the brand. So it is not enough, any more, to know the financial implications of a sponsorship. It is important to know whether one is lending one’s fame to a purpose that will not affect the fortunes of others. It can be concluded that the advertisement gave legitimacy to the enterprise, inspite of the fact that those who featured in it actually did not endorse the brand.
11. MORAL RESPONSIBILITY- Unfortunately, the Home Trade ads are no exception since the celebrities who appear in all sorts of ads for money are luring gullible public into buying trash. It is well known fact that film stars appearing in ads for cosmetics and toiletries never even touch them, let alone use them. The celebrities should never betray the confidence and trust the public has in them. A celebrity cannot escape moral responsibility by saying that he only appeared in the ad and did not endorse the product. As far as the general public is concerned both are the same. To say that they are concerned only with raking in the moolah and not responsible for anything else is the height of hypocrisy. In recent outburst against the Indian cricket team’s performance is a lesson for marketers not to take celebrity endorsement for granted. Cricket is a religion in India. It is practiced faithfully by almost all Indians irrespective of their sex, color, caste, creed and status. It has been seen that public memory is short. A very important consumer insight that has emerged is that they would not tolerate the decline and fall of their highly paid gladiators in international tournaments. An opinion conducted by Aaj Tak revealed that 87 percent of the respondents emphatically stated that they would not buy products promoted by cricketers. This consumer activism should be carefully borne in mind by marketers who should not forget that there was an open ire that cricketers were more interested in endorsing products than playing the game. The spate of advertising with cricketing celebrities has obviously not gone unnoticed. The point being made is that celebrity endorsement is no longer a joy ride all the way to the bank. With alarmingly strong and immediate consumer reactions, this route is not something to be taken for granted. STORY OF CORPORATE ENTREPRENEUR CELEBRITY Face that is a brand can be sometimes different from celebrities who endorse brands. For example, students across leading management institutes overwhelmingly chose N.R Narayan Murthy of Infosys as the business leader they admired most, for the second year in a row. And guess why, no surprise here:- “Leadership style, vision, entrepreneurial spirit and ethics”. Branding is all about consistency, coherence and long-term thinking and yes-corporate leaders can and will brands in their own right. There have been people before Narayana Murthy like Jack Welch of GE, Richard Branson of Virgin Atlantic and Anita Roddick of Body Shop who have been the faces of the organizations they headed, making their organization the “Company of Choice” to customers, employees and investors. So, not just products but even organizations can have faces, which endorse for organization values and performance. Hence we see if all the above strategies fit with the corporate entrepreneur who has built up the company itself, then there can be no better endorser that the leader himself. This not only reinforces the values of the enterprise but also gives direction and focus to the overall organization.
So the question to ponder over is that who is the face of your company to the external world. CONCLUSION Getting celebrities to endorse a brand does help in creating a sustained presence in the market, but the brands should have a long-term strategy in place. In an environment cluttered with several kinds of appeals, celebrity advertising is being used for national brands. More recently, there is a growing usage of regional celebrities to appeal to regional segments-Coke; Vim and a regional brand such as Jeeva soap are examples. While clear-cut data and the effectiveness of these kinds of celebrity appeals are hard to obtain, it may be worthwhile to analyze how certain considerations could help marketers in such strategies. Celebrity usage for a new brand should necessarily have a long-term strategy in place before celebrity route is taken. It need not be a freebie-it could be a well thought out plan, which adds value to the brand association. Such planning ensures that the initial mileage derived from the celebrity used (in terms of brand trials) is not wasted. Problem in using celebrity by a brand in the consumer durable category becomes much more complex as consumers may not invest a fortune in an expensive durable simply because celebrities endorse a brand. Exceptional cases may be Santro and Palio because it itself is a ‘niche’ strategy. Usage of celebrity in the case of Palio, which is reported to have registered a rise in sales after the introduction of the famous and record creating cricket celebrity, it had revamped the product offering in an attempt to enhance the value proposition of the offering. A durable would do well to choose a celebrity who has an ‘expert association’ with the product usage-a microwave using a celebrity known for her expertise in cuisine. A washing machine brand using a cricket celebrity would offer little advantage unless he has a charismatic presence in a specific region.
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