Endorsement by celebrities may help a brand in several ways - enhancing attention, increasing recall, induce positive attitude change and portray bigness to small brands thus making them relevant alternatives and so on. In India, however, it is largely been a gut driven industry, at least until now. Marketing managers have some objectives, they think a celeb can help them achieve those objectives and so they hire one. Who to choose is largely based on board room debates, and at times, some form of quick dip-stick studies or questions added to ongoing tracks. Rarely is it a concentrated effort.
Celebrities on the other hand, charge fees based on how much time they spend on the brand and the media involved rather than how relevant they are to a brand. In other words, it is largely a flat fee irrespective of whether one is endorsing a shampoo or a health food drink.
A recent study CelebTrack, done jointly by Percept Talent Management and Hansa Research, aims to get some form of science to this thousand crore industry. Most of the top line findings are not surprising. Big B and Sachin, both at the fag end of their careers, still reign supreme among the consumers of India. Katrina considered the most sexy celeb, Aishwarya most beautiful, Aamir edges past Shahrukh, thanks to the Ghajani effect and the inconsequential recent releases by the later. Once we take a detour from this crowded ‘nice to know’ maze, we come across some interesting insights such as which celebrity is relevant for which type of brand.
Let’s start with a typical celeb choosing process. A typical brand manager, let us say from the cosmetic/beauty industry would perhaps think it commonsensical to pick up a sexy or a glamorous celeb for one of its product categories, let’s say shampoos. Similarly, as a marketing manager from a financial services firm, let’s say an insurance company, you would not need any research to tell you that the celeb you chose should be a successful person in real life and not a struggler. He/She should be considered trustworthy and financially savvy among the junta since we are talking about financial investments and not household cleaners. If you notice, the focus is on what a celebrity should be and not so much on what he should not be. No wonder then that we keep seeing the same faces endorsing brands across a myriad of categories. How can you explain Mr. Bachchan endorsing Navratna hair oil and Reid and Taylor? Perhaps he can pull it off given his rounded personality. But how many others could do this?
CelebTrack data reveals that consumers make brand choices based on two broad appeals from celebrities– physical appeal (sexy, stylish, beautiful, macho etc) and character appeal (trustworthy, intelligent, family oriented etc). Hence they classify, unknowingly, most celebrities on either of the two. So if you were to pick up a celebrity randomly, chances are he will do very well on one and not so well in the other.
Brands, therefore, should start thinking like the consumer and pick up traits that they think are most relevant for them – physical or character.
Coming back to the example of shampoo brand manager and the insurance marketing manager. The later should know that he should concentrate on character traits rather than physical as the consumers disassociate physical traits when thinking about finance. Therefore, his celebrity should preferably not be glamorous and sexy. This quote perhaps summarizes it best from a consumer point of view “I consider these glamour and hot celebrities good for products such as deodorants or shampoos. If you ask me to take a home loan because a good looking celebrity is asking me to, I would tell you that when it comes to finance I would go with brains rather than beauty”.
If we look at the CelebTrack data for the cosmetic and the finance category (refer chart 1), character traits go well (high correlation) with financial category whereas the inverse is true for cosmetic category where they have a poor faring. Now notice Chart 2, and see how the red line (Cosmetics) starts rising up on physical traits and the blue line for Finance dropping. This is because traits for financial category and that of the cosmetic category are negatively correlated. In other words, what goes well for a financial brand does not go well for the cosmetic brand and vice-e-versa.
As quoted by the marketing head of one of the leading financial brands of the country, “Owing to the nature of our business, what we were looking for is someone who is matured and successful and not necessarily physically appealing. CelebTrack findings are in tune with our thinking”.
Now reflect upon a few ads that you have seen recently. Can you see a few anomalies? For example a very popular male celebrity is being used by the biggies from both the financial and the cosmetic industry. At least one of them is making a mistake.
Indeed, one brand’s meat could be another brand’s poison.
