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Executive Summary

Advertisers and marketers have long relied on celebrities for promotions. This paper looks at the following issues: Is it smart to use celebrity endorsements for branding? Are they worth it?
At the end of the day, do any stakeholders in a company (employees, contractors, customers, shareholders, communities the company supports with jobs) benefit from a celebrity endorsement?

Does anyone buy a product because a Bollywood or TV actor/actress stands up and reads a script in somewhat convincing manner? Are their distinctions in how consumers perceive these types of endorsements and respond to them?

What happens when a celebrity endorser gets involved in a public scandal, or worse, dies? Will the product lose consumer support or perish?

The most important thing to remember is that putting a celebrity in an ad is not an idea in itself. Unfortunately, this is how most celebrities are being used in Indian advertising, where they just become a prop. Ideally, there should be an idea that makes the celebrity relevant to the product and the consumer. A celebrity's presence in the ad should be contextual.

Celebrity endorsement cannot guarantee fool-proof success. The celebrity endorsement strategy must be integrated with target market characteristics, and the other elements of the marketing mix such as product design, branding, packaging, and pricing. The message execution that will be mouthed by the celebrity must likewise be made clear and single-minded. You can do this cleverly by aligning the spirit of the brand to the product, or by using a celebrity because it ensures that people will notice you, and hopefully remember what the brand is saying. Smart associations are ones where the former happens.

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* Contributed by: -
Aditya Krishna Dheram & Shruti Kashyap,
NITIE, Mumbai.