The previous blog on ‘Nano marketing by Tata Motors’ deals with the advertisements in the automobile industry. In this blog I would like to debate on Celebrity branding in any industry. What is celebrity branding? Is it really required? How to make it work?
Q . What is celebrity branding?
Advertising promotes a product, service or event to its target audience. A target audience is the portion of the general public that products, services or events were created for to fill a desire or need in the marketplace.1
Commercial advertisers often seek to generate increased consumption of their products or services through branding, which involves the repetition of an image or product name in an effort to associate related qualities with the brand in the minds of consumers.
Celebrity branding is a type of branding, or advertising, in which a celebrity uses his or her status in society to promote a product, service or charity 2.
Q . Is Celebrity Branding really required? Does it work?
Yes. I would like to quote Sriram Vadlamani’s statement in his blog : ‘Otherwise companies will not spend that much amount on the stars day in and day out. 3’
If companies are spending so much why do we even question about the worth of celebrity branding. The following are the vintage ads that I liked the most.
1. Doodh Doodh (Psr featured in facebook) – This ad actually got me to drink milk over soft drinks.
2. Hutch You and I – This ad created waves and hutch came into the Indian market with a bang.
3. Zoozoo – The best ads of 2008.
4. Nescafe (Psr featured in facebook) – I have atleast a glass of coffee a day
5. 7 up ads by fido dido – I liked the creativity in these ads.
An ad need not get you to buy the product for you may not even fall in their target market segment. But, given a choice you will recommend these brands over others. These are the ads that I would remember forever. None of my selected vintage ads have any celebrties in them. On other hand, there are many issues in getting the brand promoted by celebrities like celebrity brand mismatch, rumours, multiple endorsements and hefty pay checks.
Celebrity Brand Mismatch:
Tiger woods and Buick - The brand personalities of Buick and Tiger go together like oil and water. Buick is an older person’s car (Tiger is less than half the age of the average buyer.) Tiger is very young, very cool and at the top of his game. You imagine him driving a Bentley, a Mercedes or a Lexus 4.
Rumours:
Type ‘Shah Rukh Khan has Tata Sky’ in Google. Many sites show up saying Shah Rukh uses Tata Sky promoted by Aamir Khan rather than Dish TV. This might be a rumour but it shows that celebrities don’t even use the brands they endorse. An issue like the above one can spread in hours through viral marketing and news media and hurt the brand.
Multiple Endorsements:
Celebrities nowadays are endorsing too many brands. Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan endorse around 20 brands. Amitabh Bachchan endorses - Cadbury's chocolate ( Cadbury's Diary Milk), Dabur hajomola candies and dabur Chyavanaprash ( medicine), Reid & Taylor ( suitings), Emami boroplus ( cream), ICICI bank, Pepsi Cola, Doordarshan ( Television network), Nerolac Paints, Polio drops ( govt. ad),Maruti versa ( car), Parker pens. We find it difficult to what personality or what character does brand portray? Other than Reid & Taylor, Cadbury's and Parker pens- which show style and brand being vintage - other brands - a lot of them, its difficult to know what they associate. Even for an MBA student like me it becomes difficult to recollect all the brands endorsed by a celebrity.
Celebrities Hefty Prices:
Rs 6 crore for Saif and Kareena (Saifeena like Brangalina) for Airtel Hello tunes 5. Rs 25 crore for Abhishek and Aishwarya for soap commercial 6. The zoozoo ads on the other hand costs Rs 3 crore 7. The entire marketing for Nano costed Rs 2 crore.
The above issues and the hefty pay checks raise the question about the requirement of celebrities. Imagine you are a new entrant into a market and want people to become conscious about your brand or you are a player in an undifferentiated product. How will you make people aware of your brand in the quickest time possible? The two ways that I can think of are celebrity branding or innovative advertising (Viral marketing comes into play once consumers test your product and is less effective in undifferentiated products). Innovative advertising is much more risky than celebrity branding and it is not easy to be innovative. Celebrity mismatch has a less powerful effect than matched celebrity brand endorsement 8. So how do you ensure that the celebrity and brands match with eachother.
Q. How to match celebrity brand endorsement?
Celebrity brand endorsements works if:
1. The brand can be readily associated with the celebrity’s personality. For e.g. Sports players endorse Nike and Adidas. Sachin Tendulkar’s ‘Boost is the secret of my energy’ ad was one ad will actually let people in India to try out Boost.
2. Exclusivity of the celebrity. E.g. Rehman does only selected ads but the impact is huge. His presence and music direction for Airtel had much more worth than Shah Rukh Khan.
3. Longevity of the Celebrity. The longer the celebrity associates with the brand, the more credible is the belief that the celebrity too uses the brand. E.g. Sachin and MRF tyres.
4. Celebrity using the endorsed brand. This probably has the highest weightage. If the celebrity uses the brand he endorses it shows that he believes in what he had said in the advertisements.
I believe celebrity endorsements are required but should be properly matched with the brand. There should be exclusivity and the celebrities interest in the brand should be genuine and not just for the hefty pay checks. A celebrity promotes a brand and the brand inturn promotes the celebrity.
Bibliography
1. http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-advertising.htm
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebrity_branding
3. http://trak.in/tags/business/2009/05/03/do-celebrities-really-help-a-brand/
4. http://ries.typepad.com/ries_blog/2007/07/celebrity-endor.html
5. http://www.livemint.com/2009/02/05230309/8216Saifeena8217-the-Rs.html
6. http://movies.indiatimes.com/News-Gossip/News/Aishwarya-Abhishek-paid-25-crores/articleshow/5076092.cms
7. business.rediff.com/.../slide-show-1-welcome-to-the-world-of-zoozoos.htm
Other links.
8. http://elab.vanderbilt.edu/research/papers/Connecting%20with%20Celebrities%20-%20Celebrity%20Endorsement,%20Brand%20Meaning,%20and%20Self-Brand%20Connections%20%5BEscalas,%20Bettman%5D.pdf
9. http://ezinearticles.com/?Do-We-Need-Another-Celebrity-Fragrance?&id=2208581
10. http://www.scribd.com/doc/19233410/Celebrity-Endorsements
11. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/opinion/edit-page/Do-celebrity-endorsements-help-sell-products/articleshow/1507840.cms
12. http://www.merinews.com/article/famous-brands-benefit-from-celebrity-endorsement/183.shtml
13. http://advertising.about.com/
14. http://www.indianmba.com/Faculty_Column/FC706/fc706.html
1 comment:
nice.. was insightful... i am not completely convinced about the effectiveness of celeb endorsing... i feel the brand receives less focus, and concepts for the ads are usually ridiculously unimaginative...
non celeb ads have more scope for being innovative, the focus is on the brand and it costs much less... the extra money could be used to buy more airtime...
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