Cricket, Stars and advertisement




I am not sure about the world but in India we are religious people where cricket and movies can be deemed as major, if I m not wrong. I feel sorry for politicians although, they could be. Sorry, But for now you are out of count. There’re only two things which really make us alike, cricket and Bollywood.


No matter what, both guarantee excitement and unpredictability. Not to our amazement, advertisers are running behind them to entice and engage audience, there has been wild rout to employ celebrities to endorse their products or service.
Here are some of the details of recent improvement in the field of advertising and pockets of the celebrities.

Kareena Kapoor closed mega deal to endorse Pepsico's Kurkure brand for a whopping $1.4 million, leaving behind her $1 million contract for Vivel soap, making her the biggest endorser among female stars.

Following her are Mallika Sherawat ($700,000) Katrina Kaif ($600,000), Aishwarya Rai Bachchan ($500,000 to $600,000), Priyanka Chopra (300,000 to $400,000) and Preity Zinta and Rani Mukherjee ($170,000 to $200,000). Putting some masala, thrill and hi-drama to this crazy world of mega-deals is the war of the Khans.

While, Aamir etch you “sar utha ke piyo” and it is the safest drink on earth, sharukh has a bit different idea, he thinks pepsi is better. When SRK impresses the audience with his driving ability in his santro; Aamir decides a showdown with his innnova impersonating several characters.

International appeal of SRK hawks Tag Heur, Nokia and Dish TV; so, Aamir settles of score with Titan, Samsung and Tata sky. Things are getting interesting with every tv ad. These mad, big bucks, celebrity endorsements are, no doubt, amazingly rewarding for the stars and star- hungry viewers. I estimate that celebrity endorsements took a giant leap of almost 50 percent increment in India in the year 2007.

I would like to come back to the point. Do high profile celebrity endorsements really work? Can they influence the buying behavior of consumers?

I don’t know, even those calling themselves the advertising experts have been debating on this topic a lot and can’t really claim to have attain mastery over this subject of consumer behavior, buying motive or behavior, well lets go ahead and do a bit of research more on that point- but, will it make any difference. I don’t know but I ll do my part and it’s up to my listeners to decide what to do and what not to do?

Remember, our aging dream girl Hema Malini hawking the mineral water Ken and the Bank of Rajasthan; And what you make out of high profile lyricist Javed Akhtar (he has an intriguing answer for everything; I m sorry sir) remember the movie you call it “karthik calling karthik “ a sordid inspiration of brad pitt starrer “Fight club”) endorsing Jaypee Cement? Or Bipasha Basu enticing you for Real Estate, Or Big B waxing about Navratna hair oil?
Do Celebrity Endorsements Work?

There is an interesting survey worth sharing, IMRB and i-Pan of over 2000 respondents, across 12 cities (small and big metros) (who really were confused about themselves) found interestingly that 86 percent of viewers remembered the ad or the products endorsed by the celebrities but the most interesting part of the survey (I m not too sure if they are lying) that only 3 percent of admitted that it influenced their buying behavior.

The IMRB study found that "more than the celeb pull, factors like quality, price and experience ultimately drove consumers purchasing pattern.
But the most intriguing part of this survey is there were only 22% of the people who believe that celebrities use the products endorsed.

Here is one good question, should celebrities be dumped?
I m not sure about the other people but what if you endorse 17 products or 20 products at a time, will the purchaser be able to distinguish the products “celebrity” has endorsed?

Celebrity endorsement could be good ploy to break the initial clutter and get easy recognition of the brand, but after that it will be quality that will speak the volume not the endorser.

No comments:

Post a Comment