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For example, in the much talked about Shah Rukh-Santro campaign, the organization wanted to overcome the shortcoming of an unknown brand, Korean at that. The objective of the company was to garner faster brand recognition, association and emotional unity with the target group.
The Santro ad showed the highest recall amongst auto ads, despite average media spends for the category. Reason being simple - star power paid off.

Another example was the launch of Tamarind by S. Kumar, they reckoned they spent 40-50 per cent less on media due to the sheer impact of using Hrithik Roshan who was riding on the 'Kaho Na Pyar Hai' wave of Success. Ad recall was as high as 70 per cent, and even the normally conservative trade got interested (so while a new brand would normally take 8-10 months for entry into a Shopper's Stop, Tamarind was prominently displayed within 20 days of launch). But now looking at the long term effects of Hrithik, his movies began to flop and it may seem a sheer co-incidence that the Tamarind brand died out as well.

Looking on the flip side, the biggest concerns from the advertiser's point of view is that of 'vampiring' - the celebrity being bigger than the brand. Consider the 1980s when Dinesh Suitings chose Sunil Gavaskar as their brand endorser. Soon it was seen that Gavaskar completely overshadowed the brand. A similar case was that of Shah Rukh and Mayur Suitings, where post termination of the contract, the corporate had to vest crucial monies in a campaign where the sole objective was to wean the brand identity off Shah Rukh Khan. So having a celebrity who may outshine your product is not such a viable idea is the common consensus.

The other problem is that of duration of endorsement, and a possible mismatch between the celebrity's life cycle and that of the brand. Owing to unavailability of dates, sometimes long-term contracts are signed, but the celebrity's life might be over soon. Multiple endorsements are the other problem. There is unfortunately a limited pool of celebrities who can resonate with consumers. So you have the same celebrity endorsing several categories, as in case of Shah Rukh and Sachin, who are completely over-exposed - one would assume a fair degree of confusion and little room for credibility, and hence, a possible devaluing amongst customers.

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* Contributed by: -
Naveen Blazey & Shashi Kanth Ganti,
Goa Institute of Management, Goa.