Celebrity Fixation

Quick, here's a quiz question: name the company whose advertisements on prime time TV feature an adorable pug and a cute little girl? Chances are, you will have no trouble in naming Vodafone. The telco's recent series of ad spots have caught the imagination of the viewing public and has been much commented on. It has even been the subject of an attempt by the animal welfare board in New Delhi to investigate alleged ill-treatment of the canine reprising the role of a loyal Dog Friday. Shot in South Africa, the ads are sweet, humorous, and engaging. Qualities that leave a lasting impression and an indelible association with the brand. The price of this breed of dog has gone up three times since the ads were released, demonstrating the wide impact of good media content.

Now here's another question: name a brand that features Hrithik Roshan? Unless you're an inveterate ad follower or a die-hard Hrithik fan, you're likely to pause and think hard. Celebrities appear in numerous media campaigns and the bigger the celebrity, the more brands they peddle. So it is that a King Khan disappears in a crowded haze of media clutter where he has endorsed everything from cars, phones, potato chips, to upcoming television shows. Clutter causes the human mind to shut down receptivity and the result - brand association and recall take a hit.

I've long puzzled over why companies choose to go with celebrities. I can think of three reasons. First, the ad lobby instinctively reaches for "celebs" to front campaigns because it has been routine. Second, there are few, if any, sound metrics that show concrete relationships between campaign expense and ROI. Finally, the old adage of "you can't go wrong with IBM" is equally at work: marketing executives within companies face little risk - and can be less accountable - for product failures when they choose to go with the agency recommendation to have Shah Rukh Khan (or Amitabh Bacchan, M.S.Dhoni, Tendulkar, Rani Mukherjee, Katrina Kaif, Kareena Kapoor...you name it) to endorse them in the first place.

Let's examine these possible reasons a little more in depth.

Celebs to the Rescue: By some reckoning, involving celebs result in a 5X-10X multiple in total expenses for media campaigns compared to those that did not have any celebrities. That's a huge number. From an agency perspective, it is risk mitigating as the presence of the celeb ensures maximum billing and an ostensibly foolproof method to bring visibility to the advertisements. In my opinion, it is a lazy strategy. Ad agencies are supposed to bring creativity to the account in such a manner that brand visibility is enhanced among the viewing public, the brand value is well articulated, and a positive connection established between the brand and the potential customer. Mere presence of a celeb - howsoever popular - does little to promote any of these, especially when the same celeb has been seen countless times in various contexts and promoting widely different products. It is lazy because it seeks to absolve the agency from hard work and instead substitute a star to carry the weight of the promotion.

Return on Investment: To this day, there are no sound, true-and-tried metrics that relate campaign (ie, media) expenditures to actual outcomes. In other words, there is no evidence or established benchmarks that demonstrate return on investment. The industry has had no real compulsion to undertake such an exercise because, for one, it is difficult to prove causation and agencies are often run by "creatives" who do not have an ear for analytical rigor; and for another, it is self-defeating as it potentially empowers the client to question expensive campaigns and billing. So ROI remains a mystery for most ad campaigns, even by large, presumably well informed, companies. Those that question are bedazzled by the agencies with the advantages of associating their portfolio of brands with a premier celebrity. At crunch time, client managements also take the easy option and settle for a presumably riskless decision (see below).

IBM Syndrome: In the good ol' days when IBM reigned supreme in the large corporate world with its "big iron" mainframe machines, mid-level management could apparently never go wrong with a decision to go for an expensive IBM lease - even where competing solutions were available at lower cost. This gave rise to the adage that "no one ever got fired for buying from IBM". The same holds true with creative media decisions. There are no real ROIs to ponder over; the top tier agency that the client has hired has recommended a sure-fire seller featuring Bollywood's Number One; and, finally, the decision can be blamed (if necessary) by client management on the outside firm that recommended and came up with the creative. In rare instances, the client may actually request a specific celeb, but chances are, the idea came from the agency. Near term awe at having Amitabh Bacchan to associate with one's products or services overwhelms longer term requirement that the product or service indeed benefited from the higher cost decision. In any case, it is unlikely someone in the future is going to rake the past.

There has been an ad from Hyundai on television lately featuring King Khan to promote the new i10 car. Pause and think about this for a minute. This a cute, tiny, bottom-of-the product lineup model from the company and here is a person, owner of the IPL franchise from Kolkata no less, fronting it! The dissonance is striking. No average person would be expected to believe that Khan actually drives one of these little peas-on-wheels or to buy the product because one loves the superstar. Does Hyundai have concrete data that shows sales have increased because buyers saw Khan in the ads? Or even that they remember the i10 every time they see him? If not, why bother with such expensive campaigns? Moreover - and the ad community would not admit it - examine closely and one discerns a curious fact: campaigns featuring celebs, for the most part, are not even creative by any stretch of the imagination. I don't know about Hyundai, but I personally cannot find one redeeming quality about the particular advertisement. You just have to compare this with the Vodafone ad to see what I mean. The reason is simple: celeb-less ads need more work, require creativity, to ensure they do not disappear in the maw of indistinguishable mediocrity. That's not to say all celeb-less ads are creative, but the good ones are vastly more so than anything the ad agencies can dish up with pricey celebs.

Why, then, is there a surfeit of celeb advertisement in this country? No developed market in the world finds such a crying need to involve celebrities as in India. Automobiles, FMCG products, beverages, telecom, travel and entertainment - none of these see any celebrity endorsements to any great extent in the developed markets of Europe, North America, or Japan. The only exceptions are luxury goods or premium range products and services where one might see a Tiger Woods, a George Clooney, or a Roger Federer. In India, both marketing professionals and the agencies see them as de rigueur across all product categories and verticals, and this belief itself needs to be busted. Some of the most memorable campaigns in this country have, in fact, had no celebrities and memory recall for the respective brands has been instantaneous: think Amul, Air India, Bournvita, Vicks VapoRub, Bajaj Auto, Raymond's, Vimal, Surf, and more. Try convincing the ad moghuls weaned on Bollywood that the Indian consumer really does not care for celebrities and that until there is evidence of a causal link between expensive, celebrity-endorsed campaigns and return on investment such campaigns are merely taking the clients for a ride!

But, then again, it's for senior management within client companies to wake up and smell the coffee...