Through a special arrangement, what follows is an excerpt of an article from Indiaretailing.com, presented here for discussion.
Virtually within hours of earning a bronze medal in the Olympics, Vijender Kumar had been roped in by sportswear brand Adidas as its ambassador. Besides Mr. Vijender, Adidas is looking to get associated with pugilists Akhil Kumar and Jitender Kumar who brought India glory with their unexpectedly good show at the Beijing Olympics.
Aligning brands with legends can be immensely valuable in terms of brand-building - provided that the personalities remain closely aligned to the brand values. India's new-found sports stars are the newest kids on the block and can expect to be hounded by scores of brands and retailers for endorsements. To date, brands have been aligning themselves with celebrities who predominantly belong to Bollywood or cricket.
When Indiaretailing dug deep to study the primary drivers of brand endorsements in India, it found that there are two important things the Indian branding industry is lacking in: According to experts, there is a scarcity of true icons in India and also the advertising industry is missing some genuine creative concepts.
"India has a serious lack of actual icons," said Akashendu Das, a veteran advertising professional popularly known as Akash Das. "When we speak of icons our choices get limited to people from Bollywood and cricket, which are equally glamorous fields."
Citing reasons for this, Das held that the frequent appearances of these stars and players in front of the media and masses have led the advertisers to believe that their brands will be recalled by consumers whenever they see those icons. "But the fact in this case is that the brand is remembered less while the celebrity becomes memorable. I have had people speaking to me about (Indian actor) Shahrukh's brilliant performance in an advertisement with Maruti, while the star actually endorses Hyundai," he said.
Speaking further, Mr. Das asserted that the Indian advertising and branding industry has been missing out on some brilliant ideas, and is counting too much on links to hot celebrities. "Actually, it is not only about the absence of icons and real celebrities, it is about the lack of a brilliant idea. The creative impact of a brilliant idea will always sustain in the consumer's psyche, even if there are no celebrities involved," said Mr. Das.
Research conducted by Bates in India to track consumer opinion on the 'relevance and effectiveness of celebrity advertising in building brands,' urged brands to 'de-celebritise' and focus on ideas. Concluding that ideas, and not celebrities, build brands, the study identified the optimum celebrity 'fits' and the cases where celebrities overshadowed brand-building performance.
The survey showed that in the case of cars, celebrity endorsers helped the brands attain almost instant recall. The study also showed that consumers were not naïve, and were able to identify a clear difference between a good script and a good brand idea.
Discussion Questions: Much like India, do you think the celebrity endorsements too frequently fail to pay off for many brands in the U.S.? Do you think brand managers fail to notice that "ideas, and not celebrities" build brands? What are some smart strategies for picking and using a spokesperson for a brand?