brand endorsements

Celebs and More

brand endorsements

A group 8 initiative

Cadbury India – A sweet comeback

Cadbury India's four factories in India churn out close to 8,000 tonnes of chocolate and the company sells a million bars every day.

But Bharat Puri, managing director of Cadbury India will never forget the batch of Dairy Milk chocolates numbered 28F311 manufactured in 2003 at the company's plant in Thane, near Mumbai That was the worm-infested batch that triggered a crisis for the company that had always prided itself on its squeaky clean image.

To offset the negative impact of the controversy and to re-establish the dominance of Dairy Milk in its category, Cadbury also signed up Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan [ as brand ambassador. With the help of its advertising agency O&M, it created a campaign which aimed for both rational and emotional appeal.

One of the ads showed Bachchan visiting a Cadbury plant, inspecting the systems and processes and finally consuming a bar of chocolate to be convinced that there's nothing wrong with the brand.

Indian believed in Big B and he believed in Cadbury. The trust in Cadbury was back and so were the profits. The brand revived and everything was sweet again.

This is the impact of a celebrity in building a brand.

Rendezvous with Salman

Khan

He is the macho man of bollywood ,the daredevil, having the attributes of strength, attitude and benevolence. He has a cult following, these are all the ingredients for creating a strong brand image. Companies have been reluctant to associate with him because of his negative publicity but now his image boosted even more with wanted and dabangg he is the new hot property and recently signed a deal with mountain dew. He is none other than Salman Khan.

Q1. Sir you endorse a lot of brands. How do you think your endorsing a brand helps the brand?

-As celebrities people believe in us, its like a testimony. Crowd today , especially youngsters believe in public image so if a celebrity is endorsing a brand they believe in the brand’s promise.

Q2.How do u choose the brands to endorse?

-I usually choose a brand that I believe in or a brand that genuinely benefits.

Q3.Do u believe in the products you endorse?

-I never endorse products that I don’t believe in or that my fans would not accept.

Q4.When you sign a contract with a brand , is there any clause that you cant endorse a rival brand?

-Brands usually prefer exclusively. So I cant be saying I love drinking thums up and pepsi at the same time. It confuses pople, so exclusivity is a must.

Q5.How many offers do you get on an average in year?

-Many, but I don’t necessarily believe in all the products or the offers. I stick to brands that I believe are true to their promise.

Q6.Do u think bigger the celebrity the better the advertisement.

-Yes sometimes the scale of the advertisement requires a big or well known name.

Q7.On a lighter note did you ever think you be such a big brand image in India?

-I’am grateful to God for being fortunate and lucky, that I’ve been able to make a difference.

Q8.Are you brand conscious?

-Once you are a public image you have to be careful about how you carry yourself. It doesn’t really depend on the brand.

Q9.Are you loyal to any brand?

-Yes particularly to the ones I endorse otherwise whatever suits me.

Q10.Are you influenced by the ads yourself?

-I endorse them at the end of the day , so a certain amount of influence does happen.

What’s a brand?

“ A singular idea or concept that you own inside the mind of the prospect." - Al Ries (Chairman, Ries & Ries)

“Beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of introduction.” ARISTOTLE

This could aptly summarize why innumerable products are endorsed by celebrities, with or without a significant need or benefit from the same.

Today in the time of price point competition where differentiation is almost none, celebrity endorsements have become essential in order to influence the consumers and creating brand loyalty.

Importance of a Celebrit

y in building

a Brand.

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”.

The success of celebrity endorsement in India can be sought from a market research conducted earlier which found that 80% of the TV commercials scored the highest recall were those with celebrity appearances. A few examples: Sachin Tendulkar - Adidas, Sourav Ganguly - Britannia, Leander Paes & Mahesh Bhupati - J. Hampstead, Shah Rukh Khan - Pepsi, Sushmita Sen - Epson, and Aishwarya Rai - Coke.

80

20

2010

Recall of advertisements

With celebs 80%Without celebs 20%

“As celebrities people believe in us , its like a testimony. Crowd today, especially youngsters believe in public image so if a celebrity is endorsing a brand they believe in the brand’s promise.”

SALMAN KHAN(reply to a question asked by Group 8 , F .Y Bcom (H) , NMIMS)

The need of celebrities• Psychological Factors: Celebrities generally satisfy the 'esteem needs' of an individual. For example a movie actress is expected to possess a flawless skin and a blemish free face. Her fans want to know the secret of her beauty, so she becomes anatural endorser for beauty related products (cosmetics, soaps, powder).

• propping Up Awareness and Trust Levels: Rahul Dravid- (Bank of Baroda).

•To Communicate a Certain Message about the Company: Sachin Tendulkar as brand ambassador gave it the desired facelift and image for the launch of 'Victor‘

•Value for Money:

•To Position their Brand Distinctively: Lux worldwide has positioned itself as the 'soap the filmstars use'. From Leela Chitnis to Aishwarya Rai, all top actresses have modeled for Lux.

• Celebrity Standing for a Single Brand:Think Zakir Hussain and you are reminded of 'Wah Taj' Taj Mahal tea. Ditto with A. R. Rahman for Airtel.

Selecting a Celebrity

Factors to be considered

• Celebrity & audience match up,

• Celebrity & brand match up,

• Celebrity credibility,

• Celebrity attractiveness,

• Cost consideration,

• A working ease and difficulty factor,

• An endorsement saturation factor,

• A likelihood-of-getting-into-trouble factor.

The TEARS Model (product-celeb match up)

The attributes highlighted by the acronym “TEARS” are gauged for celebrity selection. These are: -

•Trustworthiness: For example - Legendary actor Amitabh Bachchan who is an icon of trust; promoting ICICI Bank.

•Expertise: For example - Golfer Tiger Woods for a sports brand.

•Attractiveness: For example - Tennis player Anna Kournikova who used to earn dollars per year in just endorsement.

•Respect: For example - Former Miss World Aishawarya Rai and the Eye donation campaign.

•Similarity: For example - a child artist promoting a chocolate brand.

A celebrity scoring high on all the above attributes can turn out to be a good endorser for the brand under question.

The risks associat

ed

The various risks associated with celebrity endorsements are asfollows: -

•Negative publicity - If the celebrity is strongly associated with the brand then the occurrence of the negative publicity can spill over the brand.. E.g., Salman Khan lost his endorsement deal with Thumbs-Up after his infamous incidents like buck-killing and rashdriving

•Overshadowing - When celebrity endorser is used, the risk of consumers focusing on the celebrity and not on the brand exists.

•Overexposure - This risk arises when the celebrity chooses to endorse several different products simultaneously which might leave the consumers confused. E.g., Sachin Tendulkar endorses several brands such as MRF, TVS Victor, Pepsi, Fiat, Boost, etc.

•Financial Risk - The decision for hiring an expensive endorser may not be always feasible if there is a poor brand fit.

•Overuse - Sometimes the company can use many different celebrities to appeal to different market segment. But multiplicity of endorser might blur the image.

•Extinction - The favorable response obtained by a particular brand may weaken over time if the brand gets significant exposure without the association of the celebrity. If the celebrity contract is for a considerable period of time, then it can lead to draining out capital without proper return.

Are celebs the only way.

The best advertising campaign of 2010 was the Vodafone zoozoo campaign and guess what it was without a celeb .Not only this there have been so many campaigns without a celeb that have been more appealing than those with celebs, Tata motors have not been using celebs for endorsements but still it is a brand emotionally attached to Indians.

The concept of “Total Branding” is slowly emerging and many companies are focusing on that. They are emphasizing on their best practices, customer relationship management, and employee training and knowledge management. Internal brand management, under which the company ensures that employees and channel partners are convinced about the brand, is becoming particularly important, for they are the ones who have to deliver. Thus, the celebrity endorsement can be considered only as a carrier of what’s inside.

Meeting the Corporate

(Tata Motors and RIL)

~ Any damn fool can put on a deal, but it takes genius, faith and perseverance to create a brand. ~

~ David Ogilvy

• RIL is into industrial products with its flagship product been petrochemicals. The marketing of such industrial products is business-2—business and does not involve much advertising it is totally different from consumer goods industries. RIL being the biggest company in its sector are operating as a near monopoly mainly in areas of pricing. They are going to enter the consumer goods market also but don’t think they need a celebrity to promote that as they are the largest company in India and nobody needs an introduction to them.

Summary of interview with

Head sales , Western Region

RIL

•Tata motors is into both commercial vehicles and passenger cars being the market leader in the former and the market follower in the latter. In the commercial market they have almost 60% stake and celebrities rather advertisements are rarely needed. According to them the Tata brand appeals to the deepest sentiments of all the Indians. The biggest celebrity they have is Mr Ratan Tata himself who is a symbol of trust and a source of inspiration to the Indians.

A word withHead Sales, India

Tata Motors

•When asked about celebrities in the passenger car segment they felt that cars were a consumer durable and celebrity endorsements were not that important as consumers spend a lot of time thinking before buying a product so expensive. The best product and not the best endorsed product sold well. So was the case with their rivals Honda, Maruti , Mahindra etc etc . The celebrities mattered when it was about emotional value of the products where the consumers needed to be pulled towards the products like most of the FMCG brands.

•Nano was a very successful launch and it got worldwide appreciation, If u asked a guy in France about Tata he may or may not know but he would mostly know about nano. According to them nano was a revolution.

•The acquisition of Jaguar (JLR) was a strategic move to make the presence of Tata Motors in the international market and when the right time would come they would think of adding the tata name to the jaguar cars. Though this claim was not very convincing.

Credits

•Prithvi Ghag 35 •Nikunj Jalan 25•Siddharth Singh 45 •Esha Sharma 32•Prerna Gupta 34