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Brand-type Match for Success of Campaigns

In India today, the use of celebrity advertising for companies has become a trend and a perceived winning formula of corporate image-building and product marketing. This phenomenon is reflected in the recent market research finding that 8 out of 10 TV commercials scoring the highest recall were those with celebrity appearances.
A few examples: Sachin Tendulkar-Adidas, Sourav Ganguly-Britannia, Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupati-J. Hampstead, Shah Rukh Khan-Pepsi, Sushmita Sen-Epson and Aishwarya Rai-Coke. The effectiveness of the endorser depends upon the meaning he or she brings to the endorsement process¹.

An advertisement is a medium through which a brand gets a personality and endorsers are perceived as the personalities of the brand. Therefore, as it is essential to bring a synergy between an individual's outfit and his personality, the same way it is essential to bring a synergistic effect between the brand and the endorser. For example, with the Cadbury's worm issue, the brand wanted to build a trust amongst the customers in order to regain its market share. They chose Amitabh Bachchan as an endorser to build that trust and in order to regain their market share. According to the sales data, it was found out that the right celebrity selection gave the right results to them.

Another example of a successful brand can be the "Thanda matlab CocaCola" Campaign of CocaCola with Aamir Khan as their endorser. The success behind the campaign was the synergy between the youthfulness in the brand and the youthfulness in the endorser.

The perception of the brand and the endorser should bring some coherence in the campaign. This can be proved by anther example. The Bachchans were endorsing Maruti Versa but this campaign, in spite of the Bachchans being there, was a failure and indirectly the brand was a failure. The lack of coherence between the celebrity and the brand led to the failure of the brand. The consumers were not able to accept the fact that Amitabh Bachchan could ever drive a B-segment car. From the above examples, it can be stated that there should be a synergy between the brand and the endorser.

1 http://www.etstrategicmarketing.com/smNov-Dec1/stra_brand_turn.htm

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* Contributed by -
Mala Tandon,
Branch Sales Manager, ICICI Bank,
Sudeep Mehrotra,
IIM Lucknow.