Siyaram – College Essay Example

image. Moreover Company could not meet their expectation of return from the endorser. So they didn’t choose the celebrity endorsement route for its September 2001 J. Hampstead campaign. When a brand is used by a well known celebrity, they came to realize that, there are chances of their brand identity being dissolved with the celebrity identity and personality of the endorser.

After the Cronje Scandal, Siyaram noticed the issue raised a heated debate in corporate and media circles regarding the perils of using celebrity endorsement as it was a horrible mess. Associating celebrity with the brand is a great risk and the risk turned into a disaster to Siyaram. They also faced problems with tennis duo when they decided to break their partnership of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupati that also affected the company negatively. They also realized that it was not only with their case of celebrity endorser but also with Pepsi which used Madonna and Michael Jackson as their Brand endorser.

They also had to face the similar problem. In addition to this there are some other potential problems about using celebrities because in long term relationship between the celebrity and the brand can affect the audience's behavior and can have an impact on the consumers. And if the celebrities positive image changes and there would be some problems occur on the consumers perception of the brand because there are some evidences that a company’s sales can decline by the negative images of the celebrity who endorsers the brand. For example Kate Moss and H;M.

After pictured taking drugs in Daily Mirror newspaper, a lot of brands she endorsed such as Chanel, H;M

cancelled their campaigns and contracts with her. Chanel didn’t renew the contracts with her whereas H;M completely cancelled it. Because the H;M Company argued that most of their clients are young people, and any association with drugs can damage the chain's image. Another example of this, Air Jordan's generated revenue sales of $130 million in the first year. But after Jordan missed 62 games, the sales dropped miserably in the second year.

As we can see celebrities can affect the brands image easily. Another problem is the overshadowing the brand which means that consumers may only give attention to the celebrity and fail to realize the brand (Belch ; Belch, 2001; Gellene,1998) and remembers the celebrity but not the message given by the advertising so celebrity may became at the first place more than the brand and product (Fill 2005). For example Rod McCulloch who is the head of the acting school of communication at Charles Sturt

University in Bathurst. Point out that Tiger Wood's involvement in a campaign for shaving products as an example of a celebrity overshadowing the brand: "I can remember him but I don't know what brand he was endorsing and it can't be a great ad if you can't remember the brand. " The other problem about celebrity endorsement is overexposure. This problem occurs when a celebrity endorses too many companies and products (Belch & Belch, 2001). For example Tiger Woods and David Beckham.

Tiger Woods endorse for Nike, Buick, American Express, Accenture, Electronic Arts and Tag Heuer. David Beckham endorse for Adidas, ESPN, and Motorola, Gillette, Pepsi, even in soccer-lite America and more. Because of endorsing too much company

the perceived credibility may suffer (Shimp, 2003). There are some considerations to using sport celebrities as endorsers. The primary issue concerns the high financial commitment to secure the big name endorsers. Pepsi paid Shaquille O'Neal $25 million to endorse the popular soda product.

Tiger Woods received $40 million from Nike to support the company's youth marketing campaign. Although these large companies do not have a problem spending top dollar necessary to acquire famous personalities, most small companies struggle to afford any celebrities, let alone ones that cost $25 or $40 million dollars. It is a bigger risk for the smaller companies to invest large amounts. The State of Celebrity Endorsement in Sport: by Amy Dyson and Douglas Turco (Illinois State University).

As we can see if the company's celebrity endorsement be successful and a celebrity image matches with the brand and the target audience this good selection can make both company and celebrity gains (Shimp, 2003) but if the celebrity endorsement doesn’t work, marketers must think about the consequences of the bad match. Nevermore celebrity endorsement is effective and attractive and takes people’s attention. However, selecting the right celebrity endorsers is usually a tough task.

A wrong choice can ruin the image of a brand. The acceptance of an advertisement message is largely determined by the attractiveness of the celebrity presenting the message. Also, the message conveyed by the celebrity must match the product message. There has to be a match of the Product with the celebrity personality and persona as a result relevance is very important in celebrity endorsements. When there is a little fit between the celebrity and the product, the endorsement can

be counter productive.

In the case of Hansie Cronje for J. Hampstead, the selection was hugely criticized for the Siyaram Company and many issues such as he's inability to match with the product and also that it lacked a proper script came forward. These were the major that I think Siyaram did not opt for the celebrity endorsement route for its September 2001 J. Hampstead campaign. 2. Do you think the company had made a mistake in its choice of celebrities earlier? Give reason to justify your stand.

I don’t think that the company had made a mistake in its choice of celebrity earlier as it was not a company's mistake; this could happen to any celebrity as we cannot predict the nature and future of the celebrity. In fact they made a right choice of not selecting one single player and focused on the entire South African team. They were lucky as all the 14- members of the team were signed up and did not let the personality of a single player to become the brand in itself. I would rather call it a lesson to be learnt to have an in-depth study on celebrity's life before using them as a brand ambassador.

The 'Coming home to Siyaram' was a much success and much talked about for being of much longer duration than the usual advertisement before the scandal. And also after the scandal, it was much talked topic which might have created the J. Hampstead popular. However, using Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupati seems to be a wrong choice as I personally feel they were not suited to the product. They were not

charming, handsome and looked uncomfortable with the suit. I could not perceive them to relate with suit as we as an audience view them in shorts and cannot link them wearing a suit.

Since celebrity endorsements are believed to become a 'double-edged sword' A popular star can help immensely in improving brand image and recall, but at the same time star can cause a major problems for the brand if he or she lands in trouble, either in their careers or in their personal lives. However an in-depth study of the celebrity is required to know about their careers and their personal lives before signing them to endorse any product to avoid the future negative consequences.

As rightly said “I have had calls from well-wishers who say that no one could have anticipated this. We do thing right and in the right spirit. And if something goes wrong all we can do is make amends for it. The brand is bigger than any individual”. 3. As a media planner, comment on the efficacy of celebrity endorsements in general and about their effectiveness in India in particular. Do you think advertisement agencies use their campaigns because they are an easy way of attracting attention? Advantages of Celebrity Endorsement

First of all we see that some researches shown that more than 20 percent of all TV advertisements include celebrities and advertisers pay a lot of money for their services (Belch & Belch, 2001) and advertisers are ready to pay a lot of money to celebrities who are liked and respected by the consumers (Shimp,2003) Because advertisers think that a popular celebrity can effect consumers feelings and their

purchase behavior and they believe celebrities can influence the consumers persuasion of the product according to the image of it .

It can act as a signboard to the products quality and considerably increase the reputation of a brand , and can take the attention of consumers in the markets where motivation to choose between the products is difficult and low . Because of this the money advertisers pay for the celebrity endorsers mostly justified. There are alot of reasons why celebrity endorsement is a good investment. The use of celebrities can make the advertising message to take attention among the clutter and noise in many markets which the noise and clutter is too much.

Because using products which have a celebrity relation, consumers can be a little bit extra aware of the product and this can is enough for them to joggle the balance in favor of one brand instead of its competitors in the supermarket shelf. There is also some evidences that it is the most effective in sustaining recollection of the advert and the brand’s name, without giving notice the product’s type. However marketers must first find the celebrity who can best fit and represent the image of the product and its meaning (Belch & Belch, 2001).

Because, the credibility of the celebrity is important to create believable relation between the meanings which is associated with the celebrity and the product. Therefore brands must consider 3 main components the credibility comprise. They are attractiveness, trustworthiness and expertise. Considering to these components, celebrity endorser must match with the product and the product’s personality as closely as possible to be credible. Because every product

has its own personality and if the celebrity and product’s personality is very close to each other or very similar with each other then it will be much more effective..

For example a well-known athlete with good reputation and with a good match with the product may convince potential buyers that the product can improve their performance (Belch & Belch, 2001). We can give a lot of examples about it. For example. Nike which is very well known for its consistent use of celebrities to endorse the brand and had made a lot of successful celebrity endorser's collaborations. One of these successful collaboration happened between Nike and Tiger Woods As we all know Nike has a lot of sports equipments and accessories but had no experience in golf.

Mostly a brand like Nike expected to be not very successful in golf because golf is a very elite game. However they chose to collaborate with the best golf player in the world and have him endorse the brand. This person is the world-known golf player Tiger Woods. As is known today, Nike has emerged highly successful in golf because since the company signed with Tiger Woods in 1996, have seen a $50 million revenue growth. Nike's golf line grossed more than $250 million in annual sales. In 2000 he renegotiated a five-year contract estimated at $125 million.

Another successful endorsement is also happened between Nike and Micheal Jordan. It became so successful that Nike and Jordan launched a new brand called the Air Jordan line of sport shoes. Furthermore there are other good examples Reebok and tennis player Venus Williams signed the most lucrative endorsement agreement

for a female athlete, a five-year, $40-million deal with Reebok. And this campaign also became very successful. "There are several benefits to having celebrities endorse products or services.

Research has indicated that customers are more likely to choose goods and services endorsed by celebrities than those without such endorsements. Another advantage to celebrity-based campaigns is that famous people hold the viewer's attention. In this era of sound-bytes and channel surfing, there is a demand for people's time and focus. For instance, a commercial with the WNBA's Lisa Leslie or NHL's Wayne Gretzky is more likely to keep a television remote control clicker on the channel versus a commercial with a local doctor or dentist.

The third benefit of using celebrity endorsers is that s/he can provide testimony for a product or service, particularly when the product has contributed to their celebrity. This relationship can increase a consumer's belief and trust in the product and its benefits. The more familiar an endorser, the more likely consumers are to buy the endorsed product. In conclusion the good match with product and celebrity can make the advertising more believable, can improve the brand recognition, create a positive attitude towards the brand name and create a distinct personality for the brand.

The latter part of the '80s saw the burgeoning of a new trend in India– brands started being endorsed by celebrities. Hindi film and TV stars as well as sportspersons were roped in to endorse prominent brands. Advertisements, featuring stars like Tabassum (Prestige pressure cookers), Jalal Agha (Pan Parag), Kapil Dev (Palmolive Shaving Cream) and Sunil Gavaskar (Dinesh Suitings) became common. Probably, the first ad to cash in

on star power in a strategic, long-term, mission statement kind of way was Lux soap.

This brand has, perhaps as a result of this, been among the top three in the country for much of its lifetime. In recent times, we had the Shah Rukh-Santro campaign with the objective of mitigating the impediment that an unknown Korean brand faced in the Indian market. The objective was to garner faster brand recognition, association and emotional unity with the target group. Star power in India can be gauged by the successful endorsement done by Sharukh for three honchos- Pepsi, Clinic All Clear and Santro.

Similarly, when S Kumars used Hrithik Roshan, then the hottest advertising icon for their launch advertising for Tamarind, they reckoned they spent 40 - 50 per cent less on media due to the sheer impact of using Hrithik. Ad recall was as high as 70 per cent, and even the normally conservative trade got interested. In the Indian context, it would not be presumptuous to state that celebrity endorsements can aggrandize the overall brand. We have numerous examples exemplifying this claim. A standard example here is Coke, which, till recently, didn't use stars at all internationally.

In fact, India was a first for them. The result was a ubiquitously appealing Aamir cheekily stating Thanda matlab Coca Cola. The recall value for Nakshatra advertising is only due to the sensuous Aishwarya. The Parker pen brand, which by itself commands equity, used Amitabh Bachchan to revitalize the brand in India. According to Pooja Jain, Director, Luxor Writing Instruments Ltd (LWIL), post Bachchan, Parker's sales have increased by about 30 per cent. India is one country,

which has always idolized the stars of the celluloid world.

Therefore it makes tremendous sense for a brand to procure a celebrity for its endorsement. In India there is an exponential potential for a celebrity endorsement to be perceived as genuinely relevant, thereby motivating consumers to go in for the product. This would especially prove true if the endorser and the category are a natural lifestyle fit like sportspersons and footwear, Kapil-Sachin and Boost or film stars and beauty products.