celebrety branding

Celebrities worth watching
Ramanujam Sridhar
Titan seems to have hit it right with celebrity endorsements. What is clicking for the company?
Timed to perfection: Aamir Khan with Titan
India is a great country for celebrities. They seem to come in all sizes, hues, shapes, interests and prices! Advertisers and advertising agencies seem to love them as well and often end up using them indiscriminately. In the Nineties, Sachin was king and a few years ago it was Amitabh. It is decisions like these that throw up the very efficacy of using celebrities as a strategy into sharp focus.
All too often signing on celebrities seems to be done too mechanically and smacks of lazy thinking. One company seems to have got its celebrity and brand strategies right and that is a company that not only me but several others admire. That is Titan Industries Ltd, a company that has changed the way watches have been made, looked at and sold in this country. The same company uses Aamir Khan for Titan, Rani Mukherjee for Titan Raga, Mahendra Singh Dhoni for Sonata and John Abraham for Fastrack eye gear. And the results are there for consumers to see as clutter-breaking advertising and for the investors to see in terms of the brand’s dominant market share and improving top line and bottom lines.
What is Titan doing right? What are the learnings for other companies which are already using celebrities or are contemplating their usage?Think long-term
Today everybody seems to love the short run, even the analysts. Less and less chief executive officers are from the marketing area all over the world, so most strategies often enough end up being quick fixes aimed at appeasing investors and seem to be poorly thought through. A few brands such as Pepsi and Nike have looked at their marketing strategies with a clear long-term perspective and that includes the use of celebrities. Remember Lux, the film star’s soap? But one also remembers brands like the Fiat Palio using Sachin Tendulkar in a desperate bid to look good in the short run.
Are marketers using celebrities when they are completely bereft of ideas? I just wonder. But then there are exceptions like Titan as well. One of the nicest things about Titan has been its ability to think long-term whether it has been relationships or strategy. Titan has worked with Ogilvy and Mather for 20 years and with Lowe for 17 years, give or take a few months. A similar philosophy has guided the use of marketing strategies like gifting and its tryst with celebrities which all began with Aamir Khan over four years ago. Aamir is going strong with Titan and the others like Dhoni, Rani Mukherjee and John Abraham have had reasonable stints with their respective brands within the Titan fold and look set for longer innings as well.A touch of class
M.S. Dhoni with Sonata
In the Seventies, I saw a wonderful movie called A Touch of Class, starring Glenda Jackson (I must give you an indication of my youth). I am reminded of this when I see Aamir Khan. He has style with substance or “solid style”, if you prefer an Indian turn of phrase, and that is what his endorsing of the Titan brand conveys to me. He also seems to be featured as Aamir Khan in real life as an actor who is famous, turns heads, has flashbulbs popping, someone who buys a watch for his mom in the presence of a gawking fan … always as Aamir the actor in real life and the watch is always the hero.
In his first commercial that I still remember vividly a few years after it was made, he prepares to leave town for a couple of days, presumably for a shoot, and has difficulty in choosing the watches that best goes with his wardrobe. Then, in another commercial, he chooses a watch for his mom subtly plugging in the gifting concept that has now been owned by Titan, then he hires management graduates for his company and now he wears the Titan Edge and each time the watch gets into the vision of flashbulbs and assumes celebrity status that rests so easily and naturally on the shoulders of our star. Rani, Dhoni and John worthy followers
Rani Mukherjee with Raga
Rani Mukherjee represents Indian femininity, sophistication and is definitely a style icon for modern women. Even if I personally believe that her Titan scripts do not have the same depth as the Aamir Khan ones, they still work for the brand. Rumour has it that Rani is proud of endorsing Titan, as her first watch gifted by her parents was a Titan and she has fond memories of the brand. I am sure a lot of now famous Indians in different walks of life must have had a Titan as their first watch gifted or bought. Dhoni was signed on by Sonata, a Titan brand, when he was hardly the certainty that he is in the team now or the World-Cup winning captain. Sonata was a brand that was for the “Titan inclined” but who could not afford it.
Today, Sonata is a major stand-alone brand and Dhoni, the “small town boy” who has made it big internationally, represents the emergence of the small town not only in Indian cricket but in Indian economics as well as the important fact that your boundaries are not restricted by anything except your own imagination. John Abraham is another icon for a different kind of Indian who lives in the cities, watches MTV and listens to global rap. Again, the advertising draws attention to the fact that even someone like John who has tremendous oomph gets more attention because of the eye gear – again the product is the hero. Significantly, John Abraham is an avid biker and loves sunglasses. It’s all in the fit, my friend
Companies and agencies that employ celebrities conveniently give the brand celebrity fit the cold shoulder, so we have celebrities like Dhoni endorsing Mysore Sandal Soap. Also advertising agencies are so slick and glib in their presentations that they can actually depict chalk and cheese as ‘made for each other’! One of the features of Titan’s celebrity strategy has been the fit of the endorsers to the respective brands. Dhoni has an amazing fit with the Sonata brand, something that I have spoken about, while Aamir has an amazing likeness with what Titan is attempting to portray as its brand values. Rani and Abraham seem to be as comfortable with the brands they are endorsing.
All of these are top-of-the-line performers who are at the peak of their prowess endorsing dominant Titan brands. Contrast this with other brands that you see on your television screen where you keep wondering what the celebrity is doing with the brands in question. I have too few friends in the advertising business and I do not wish to test these relationships, but I am sure you can make your own conclusions about these ‘amazing brand celebrity (mis) fits’. The proof of any strategy advertising or otherwise is in the results. It is in brand salience, likeability, market share … all the brands in the Titan fold have grown significantly. Investors seem particularly happy with the company and the progress of its brands. So clearly it is all happening.So what is the bottom line?
All learning comes from observation. Observation of the best practices that other companies and brands are doing. It hardly matters that you may even be competing with the company that employs strategies worth emulating. Titan’s success raises a few questions that other companies could ask themselves before they embark on the strategy of celebrities. The first point to be borne in mind is that celebrities instantly create awareness for your brand and will, if properly executed, create a preference for your brand. But proper execution of the strategy is the key. That in turn raises a few questions.
Is your celebrity strategy reasonably long term in nature? Does your celebrity have appeal across the nation if you are a national brand? Most critically, what is the fit of the brand’s personality with the celebrity? Is the celebrity merely doing a film or is she actively involved with your brand? How good is your script? Is your celebrity just standing there holding the product or is he building preference the way Aamir Khan and Rani Mukherjee are doing for Titan?
Have you considered a punt? Sometimes you could take on someone who is a fringe celebrity now, but he may just end up being India’s cricket captain! We live in interesting times (forgive the pun) and competition is intense and savage even. What will see you through is a clear strategy that is efficiently executed. Time to think?