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IMPACT OF CELEBRITY
ENDORSEMENTS ON
OVERALL BRAND
{Searching for the Right Match}
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CONTENTS P.NO.
1. ITRODUCTION 2
2. SYNOPSIS 4
17. CONCLUSION 58
3
18. REFERENCES 67
INTRODUCTION
The modern world of marketing communication has become
colorful and inundated with advertisements, and it is hard to get
noticed. It is an uphill task for the designer of an advertising
campaign to differentiate itself from others and attract viewers’
attention.
with both attractive and likeable qualities and companies plan that
these qualities are transferred to products via marcom activities.
Furthermore, because of their fame, celebrities serve not only to
create and maintain attention but also to achieve high recall rates
for marcom messages in today’s highly cluttered environments.
If the world were full of all wise men and all wise women; we would
have never heard of a term called “advertisement”. And then good
products would have found the right customers and grown to
prosperity. Firms would have worked out a mathematical formula
to sell and succeed. But the buying process isn’t rational; and so is
this world.
Indians are die-hard movie and sport buffs; and this aspect of the
consumers has invited the concept of “Celebrity Endorsement” to
the world of advertisement. The purpose of this paper is to analyze
the role of Celebrity Endorsement in the process of brand-building
by taking appropriate examples from the advertising landscape.
SYNOPSIS
“Successful branding programs are based on the concept of
singularity. The objective is to create in the mind of the prospect
the perception that there is no other product on the market quite
like your product.”
Indian advertising started with the hawkers who used to call out
their wares right from the days when cities and markets first
began. With this evolved a strategy that tried to benefit from the
emotional attachment of the admirers or the fans of the celebrities;
in the form of celebrity endorsement.
“It doesn’t matter how new an idea is; what matters is how new it
becomes.”
- Elias Canetti
- David Ogilvy
What is a Brand?
Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, once said, “Our
most valuable assets are our intangible assets.” The intangible
asset he was referring to is a brand. The Dictionary of Business &
Management defines a brand as: “a name, term, sign, symbol, or
design, or a combination of them, intended to identify goods or
services of one seller or a group of sellers and to differentiate them
from those of competitor”.
DEFINITION OF CELEBRITIES
Celebrities are people who enjoy specific public recognition by a
large number of certain groups of people. They have some
characteristic attributes like attractiveness, extraordinary lifestyle
or special skills that are not commonly observed. Thus, it can be
said that within a society, celebrities generally differ from the
common people and enjoy a high degree of public awareness.
But also for less obvious groups like businessmen (e.g., Vijay
Mallya, Bill Gates) or politicians.Clebrities appear in public in
different ways. First, they appear in public when fulfilling their
profession, e.g., Vishwanathan Anand, who plays chess in front of
an audience. Furthermore, celebrities appear in public by attending
special celebrity events, e.g., award ceremonies, inaugurations or
world premieres of movies. In addition, they are present in news,
fashion magazines, and tabloids, which provide second source
information on events and the ‘private life’ of celebrities through
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Lack of ideas
Convincing clients
was not until the 1920s, however, that advertisers used famous
people for product endorsements.
Phase 3: Globalisation
In highly competitive markets, the following realities about brand
management exist: -
1. Product differentiating factors are duplicable and imitable.
2. All long existing and successful brands imbue their products
with a meaning.
Celebrity Values
Celebrity-Product Match
Cyrus Broacha is the brand ambassador for MTV since both the
celebrity and the brand are considered as friendly, young, mood-
boosting, humorous and outspoken. MTV’s brand personality
overlaps Cyrus Broacha’s image as a brand.
Celebrity Popularity
Celebrity Availability
Celebrity Credibility
Multiple Endorsements
Not many people can remember all the brands that a celebrity
endorses and the chances of losing brand recall increases if the
celebrity endorses multiple brands. For example, in case of Sachin
Tendulkar people recall Pepsi, TVS Victor and MRF, but might not
remember brands like Britannia and Fiat. Similarly, for Amitabh
Bachchan, consumers remember ICICI, Pepsi, Parker Pens, Pulse
Polio and BPL. They might get confused in the endorsement of
Nerolac or Asian Paints. Thus, for multiple endorsements where
the same celebrity endorses several brands, it boils down to the
strength of the brand and the advertising content.
Culture
Endorsements
Consumption
CELEBRITY SELECTION
There are various scientific ways in which the right celebrity is
selected for the product endorsement, which are discussed here
after
Stereotyping
Tellis defines stereotypes as perceptions and depictions of
individuals based on simplistic, biased image of the group to which
they belong, rather than on their own individual characteristics. For
example: its better to select celebrities who say are teens for
chocolate advertisements and females for detergent ads, etc.
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A celebrity scoring high on all the above attributes can turn out to
be a good endorser for the brand under question.
• Celebrity credibility,
• Celebrity attractiveness,
• Cost consideration,
• A likelihood-of-getting-into-trouble factor
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Selecting the right celebrity does more than increasing sales; it can
create linkages with the celebrities’ appeal, thereby adding new
dimension to the brand image. Research conducted by Katherine
Eckel has revealed that “celebrities can get people to make a
better choice but cannot influence people to make a foolish
choice”.
• When the positioning of the brand is high but the fit with the
celebrity is low, the company should adopt a “Monitor and
evaluate” strategy. The company should continuously track the
effectiveness of the celebrity endorsement through surveys,
monitoring the sales, etc. Though Parker pens had a positioning of
premier pens, the early advertisements (Refer Annexure 1) with
Amitabh Bachchan showed low brand-celebrity fit.
• When the positioning has not been effective, but the fit with the
celebrity is high, the company should adopt the strategy of “Keep
and enhance”. The company has to spot the opportunities to
leverage the celebrity investment and to find more better and
effective ways to communicate with the target audience. The
celebrity attributes align with the company’s brand, strategic
business objectives and primary customer segment. The Narain
Karthikeyan - J K Tyres relationship works well in this category.
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• Value of Hard Assets: The benefits derived from the hard assets
are those that have a clear market value such as increased sales
and increase in brand equity. These are the tangible benefits that a
company derives from its endorsement strategy.
There are ways to quantify the potential value of hard assets and
association value against their impact on company’s celebrity
endorsement by looking at the following categories: -
The Reasons
According to leading management thinker, Dr. Seamus Phan,
“Many celebrity endorsements fail because they identify a celebrity
they like in an emotive and un-researched manner and then try to
create advertising to force-fit the celebrity into the creative
concept.” Therefore, the advertisers must associate the celebrity to
the advertisement and not vice versa. Thinking on the similar lines,
the advertisers shouldn’t identify the brand to associate with the
celebrity but do vice versa.
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- William
Feather
The Solutions
As discussed, celebrity management is very crucial to avoid the
brand-celebrity disconnect, and subsequently, brand failures. If the
consumers have questions in their minds regarding the quality or
performance of the product then even God cannot save the brand.
The obvious solution to the problem of overshadowing is to make
sure that both the advertisement and the celebrity are focused on
the brand or product. To avoid any bad publicity arising out of
celebrity defames, companies may resort to multiple celebrity
endorsement. For Example: Pepsi while capitalizing on the
popularity of cricket and films in India used several cricketers and
film stars in their ads. So when Azharuddin and Jadeja got
embroiled in the match-fixing controversy, Pepsi severed its
association only with these stars, but its relationship with cricket
continued.
“The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
- Oscar Wilde
IMPACT-ANALYSIS FRAMEWORK
According to our study, the effectiveness of celebrity endorsers is
not independent, but is moderated by several factors like -
celebrity attractiveness and credibility, product-celebrity match,
message and product type, level of involvement, number of
endorsements by celebrities, target receiver characteristics and
overall meanings (e.g. personality, values, standards) attached to
celebrities. Besides these factors, environmental factors, regulative
issues and compatibility with overall marketing strategy also
influence the impact of the endorser.
Market Environment
Overall Marketing strategy
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Regulative Issues
A. Factors
I. Product
II. Endorser
III. Consumer
B. Interactions
I. Consumer - Endorser (C-E Interaction)
Every brand has a personality and the traits found in the brands
should be reflected in the celebrity too. A mismatch leads to
confused audience and lack of brand recall.
C. Influencers
I. Market Environment
secondary product of the brand and not the primary product- Ajay
Devan for Bagpiper Soda). This reduces the effectiveness of the
campaign.
The Pulse Polio campaign being coordinated by UNICEF for the Ministry
of Health and Family Welfare had Amitabh Bachchan and Sachin
Tendulkar
(7) Spoofing
(8) Mascots
Ronald McDonald, the Amul girl
John Abraham lends his rugged image to Yamaha bikes while Priety
Zinta lends her cute dimples to peddle Scooty.
Sharukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan and Rekha have perfumes named after
them
Vijay Mallaya and Richard Branson who are walking talking celebrities
and endorse their own brands through their extravagance, their
flamboyant lifestyle
The 'India Shining' campaign from the BJP and the 'Congress ka haath
aam aadmi ke saath' campaign from the Congress with Vajpayee and
Sonia Gandhi lending their faces
The Surf campaign done by Revathy and Shabana Azmi (in the
south and north respectively) which stressed on the prudent usage
of valuable water was a social proposition cleverly inter-woven in
the brand.
The year before the late Princess Diana bought an Audi, they sold just
about five hundred pieces in the UK. The following year sales figures
were close to ten thousand mark. John Abraham haybusa
SELECTION OF CELEBRITY
Model Development
Variables Developed
Hypothesis
H1: A brand-celebrity area coefficient is positively related
to audience brand-celebrity connection.
Costs Associated:
1. Endorsement fees
2. Feature establishing costs
3. Feature enhancement costs
4. Feature sustaining costs
Risks Associated:
1. Mismatch risk
2. Celebrity feature transition risk
3. Celebrity feature mortality risk
Methodology
Methodology
Alternate
Celebrity Brand
Celebrity*
Amitabh
Polio Shah Rukh Khan
Bachchan
Shah Rukh Khan Santro Preeti Zinta
Sachin Tendulkar TVS Victor Brett Lee
Sona Chandi
Saurav Ganguly Mohammed Kaif
Chavanprash
Rahul Dravid Hutch None
Hrithik Roshan Tamarind (S. Kumars) None
Aishwarya Rai Nakshatra Katrina Kaif
Kareena Kapoor Airtel A. R. Rehman
Saif Ali Khan Ruffle Lays Nawab Pataudi
Preeti Zinta Pepsi Yuvraj Singh
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Results
Thus, CEI calculation was made for the ten celebrities. The
CEI is quantitative measure of: -
1. Popularity
2. Image and positioning
Santro:
TVS Victor:
Hutch:
Nakshatra:
Airtel:
Ruffle Lays:
Pepsi:
4. A. R. Rehman : CEI = 38
Success Failure
Brand
Celebrity Celebrity
Polio 224 162
Santro 263 215
TVS Victor 277 186
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Sona Chandi
177 92
Chawanprash
Hutch 200 -
Tamarind 186 -
Nakshatra 234 100
Airtel 247 148
Lays 190 70
Pepsi 186 155
Limitations
Appendix
Adidas Sachin 73 85 25
Samsung Tabu 54 68 25
Paints-
Pataudi
Royale
Fardeen Khan Provogue
Stylish Amitabh Reid &
Bachhan Taylor
Honest Tarun Tejpal Tehelka
Trustworthiness Sachin TVS
Reliable
Tendulkar Victor
Sachin &
Knowledge Reebok
Expertise Sehwag
Qualified Naina Balsavar Shampoo
concerns, and then assuring consumers that his doubts had been
satisfactorily laid to rest (after the factory visit).This reinstated
customer faith in Cadbury and sales have now touched pre-worm
crisis days.
Cases
1. Sharukh Khan - Mayur Suitings (Positive Impact)
This strong man from yester years, still resonates as the only
brand ambassador, who managed to sell a motorcycle in each and
every corner of India in the 80’s. Dharmendra’s image of being a
brawny man, hailing from the rustic roots of India, gave Rajdoot
motorcycles the perfect brand ambassador it was looking for. He
not only gave to the product a sturdy and robust image, but also
brought to the product trust and honesty which it was trying to build
in its first time buyers.
Cycles in India are generally used by men and the target segment
belongs to low income group. By using Rani, the consumers could
not be assured of the product’s qualities and could not relate the
product to the ambassador. Hence, the consumers were not
motivated towards the product and the ad was called back, thereby
emphasizing the need for a brand-celebrity fit.
CONCLUSION
There is an increasing challenge to the marketing manager to
develop and implement an integrated marketing communication
(IMC) plan to realize the true value of the celebrity endorsements.
There is a gradual shift from the traditional approach of showing
celebrities in advertisement to making them the “spokes-person” of
the brand. Companies have taken celebrity endorsement to next
level by projecting brands as a way of life. Smart companies are
using their brand ambassadors in other mediums such as movies
to promote their brands.
Wooing the key existing and potential target customers is the trait
of a successful promotion strategy. However, the marketing
manager should be able to offer significant value propositions in
the services / products offered to the customers. Thus, one needs
to integrate celebrity endorsement with other marketing programs
and ensure that the celebrity attributes align with the overall brand
or company. Companies that succeed in developing such an
integrated IMC plans is the one to succeed in the long-term.
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He repeats his action and adds, “Bhai shai.” The girl is dumbstruck
and nods wordlessly. One more and he adds, “Padosi to honge.”
Yet another page succumbs, ‘Chachi wachi. What a great pen!”
The girl just nods her assent.
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He repeats his action and adds, “Bhai shai.” The girl is dumbstruck
and nods wordlessly. One more and he adds, “Padosi to honge.”
Yet another page succumbs, ‘Chachi wachi. What a great pen!”
The girl just nods her assent.
MVO: “New Beta from Parker. Dil chahe likhte jaayen.” The shot of
the auditorium, now deserted... ... except for the girl and her idol.
He continues to sign as she dozes next to him, “Doodh wala,
paper wala, dhobhi...”
“There is one thing which is stronger than all the armies of this
world, and that is an idea whose time has come.”
- Victor Hugo
(1 April, 2008)
REFERENCES
Bibliography:
Websites:
• www.thedayaftertomorrow.com
• www.synovate.com – 2003
• www.indiantelevision.com
• www.magindia.com
• www.blonnet.com
• www.rediff.com – article by Country head, O&M India
• indiainfoline.com – article 'Celebrity Endorsements in
brands.
• www.coolavenues.com
The End
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