Celebrity Endorsements “Indian” way of building Brands?

Posted on | January 4, 2010 | 3 Comments

Bollywood Actor, Shahrukh Khan, endorsing Pepsi

The word “brand” is derived from the Old Norse brandr, meaning “to burn.” It refers to the practice of producers burning their mark (or brand) onto their products (source Wikipedia). Branding started as early as 1800 when companies in the West started to understand the value of having jingles, mascots and slogans, helping them with the perception of the product and relationship with the customer. Leading to increased sales, loyalty, identity and market share.

Brands

In the West, there are several brands who have made a real impact on our decision making, some of these are: Thomas Cook (Travel), Google (Technology), Coca Cola (Beverages), Nike (Sports) and list continues. These companies have steered us from choosing their competitors over them. A lot goes into building a brand perception, television, radio, social media are just some of the ways this is achieved. My favourite example is Coca Cola and how it re-innovated Christmas.

Growing Indian Economy and importance of Branding

There is serious amount of investment going into India. When most Western economies were shrinking India enjoyed a growth of 7.9% in Real gross domestic product (GDP) in the second quarter of 2009. Over the last six years the Indian Economy grew at an average of 8% and is set to overtake China in 2020 as the fastest growing economy.

This has obviously attracted several companies and investors in the country and a war has begun to sell more products. There are new shopping malls and brands launched regularly, all of this is making it important for companies to stand out even more from their competition.

Indian Brand building = Celebrity endorsements?

I took the liberty this time around to indulge in advertisements on Indian television and radio. To my horror, I discovered that the Indian branding agencies were not being as innovative with their budgets as they should have been. Most advertisements were centred around Cricket or Bollywood. Brands in India seem to use actors and cricketers to promote anything from soft-drinks to mobiles and even B2B products like cement, private equity firms and builders. The equivalent of this in England would be using Wayne Rooney (footballer) to star in a advertisements promoting 3i Private Equity Group. Exactly, doesn’t make sense, does it?

I’m convinced that most of these brand endorsing celebrities are coming on-board based on research centred around the impact of celebrity endorsements. Although surely if every brand is using celebrities, there isn’t much of a USP (Unique Selling Point) for brands. Where is innovation in building brands?

Saying that there is light at the end of the tunnel, some brands are thinking beyond celebrity endorsement, two of my favourite campaigns are Vodafone (Mobile phone service) and Fastrack (Fashion Accessories)

See the Fastrack video, targeting the youth market: Video (YouTube) and more videos available here. Vodafone videos available here:

Fastrack (India) Advertising Campaign

Apart from the obvious use of the target demographic as oppose to recognisable faces, Fastrack has been innovative in the use of social media. It has a Facebook group with 32,000+ users and has a contest to get user generated videos. With the current broadband penetration, cheapest mobile phone tariff (in the world) and growing usership on social networking sites like Orkut (Google) and Facebook it makes a lot of sense to invest in social platforms.

Although the challenge is not just using social media but to engage audience and to develop integrated marketing campaigns. Online engagement is relatively a new concept for the Indian market but is the way the branding industry is going globally. For companies to sell more in India they will need to reduce pushing of brands and focus on a dialogue.

Conclusion

There is immense potential for growth of innovative brand building using fresh concepts and using innovative platforms. I’m confident that in the upcoming years we will see a spike in world class advertising campaigns. I will leave you with a fantastic video discussing spend on Digital media in India (source CNBC TV18).

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Comments

http://www.shefaly-yogendra.com/ Shefaly

You raise a good question but I am afraid you have got completely the wrong end of the stick.

Celebrity endorsements could broadly be two kinds: one, where the celebrity is just named the brand ambassador e.g. Aishwarya Rai for Longines, based on the celebrity's recognition alone; two, where the celebrity endorsement is a local decision, based on the _local context_ and the particular person's _known qualities_ deeply embedded in that person's _professional achievements_ known to the _target audience_. I emphasise these for your consideration.

On neither of the two bases mentioned above would Wayne Rooney be the brand ambassador for 3i (a product category which has no precedence of using brand ambassadors but if they did, then perhaps a sportsperson or artist who has shown immense business skill as well as sporting talent would be relevantl; I'd say Jay-Z would be a great brand ambassador for 3i should the VC firm ever go down that route; look up Jay-Z's business portfolio to see what I mean).

There are several examples of the second kind in your list and I am afraid I do not think you appreciate the reason, for instance, why Amitabh Bachchan endorses Binani Cement (and why not Shahrukh Khan).

Why single out India on this anyway? L'Oreal's celebrity endorsers in various product categories are famous; Unilever used to use film stars to sell Lux yonks ago and have you missed Accenture and the link of their global branding to Tiger Woods?
rajanand

Thanks for the comment Shefaly. I'm not against celebrities endorsing products, I think that is brilliant and makes a good story to tell. My key point here is lack of freshness.

Allow me to explain myself, as you might know Indian television notoriously displays ads not only during the breaks but also ticker tapes through the programme. Generally what you see is an actor or crickets alongside the brand. That is not one but just about every brand. It makes me think, what about innovation? Also why is Mahendra Singh Dhoni signed as a brand ambassador for Lafarge Cement? Is that really making cement sexy? Why not invest funds in an engaging campaign with the user, perhaps sponsoring builder discussion forums. After all successful brands connect many to many.

In the case of 3i I agree someone like JayZ, Ashton Kutcher etc would be approrpriate. Coming on to Tiger Woods signing to Accenture, I think it's highly innovative as most management consultancy firms wouldn't think of it. The point is, Accenture now stands out of the crowd. Although if Mckinsey tomorrow signs up Cristiano Ronaldo, I wouldn't think of it as innovation.