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Selecting the right celebrity does more than increasing sales; it can create linkages with the celebrities' appeal, thereby adding new dimension to the brand image. Research conducted by Katherine Eckel has revealed that celebrities can get people to make a better choice but cannot influence 'people to make a foolish choice'.

The success of celebrity endorsement in India can be sought from a market research conducted earlier which found that 8 out of 10 TV commercials scored the highest recall were those with celebrity appearances. A few examples: Sachin Tendulkar - Adidas, Sourav Ganguly - Britannia, Leander Paes & Mahesh Bhupati - J. Hampstead, Shah Rukh Khan - Pepsi, Sushmita Sen - Epson, and Aishwarya Rai - Coke.

7. Why Celebrity Endorsement Fails?

There maybe cases where brands are not able to take-off even after the backing of celebrities. And this leads to speculations in the Ad World on the soundness of celebrity endorsement as an effective communication strategy.

7.1. The Reasons

According to leading management thinker, Dr. Seamus Phan, "Many celebrity endorsements fail because they identify a celebrity they like in an emotive and un-researched manner and then try to create advertising to force-fit the celebrity into the creative concept." Therefore, the advertisers must associate the celebrity to the advertisement and not vice versa. Thinking on the similar lines, the advertisers shouldn't identify the brand to associate with the celebrity but do vice versa. The success of celebrity endorsement also depends upon the capacity, knowledge, experience, and qualification to talk about the product. Failure may be attributed to improper positioning (Example: Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan & Maruti Versa), negative perception after use of product / service (inferior products), misapprehension of the meaning of the endorsement, etc.

"The philosophy behind much advertising is based on the old observation that every man is really two men - the man he is and the man he wants to be."

- William Feather

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* Contributed by -
Sohag Sarkar,
IBM Global Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.,
Bhopal (MP).