Celebrities, being favored by billions of audiences all over the world, is a tag itself. Across the world, you can find die-hard fans of the glam faces.
In India, with such a massive population, the number of fans of any celebrity is very high. The already renowned faces can easily distinguish themselves from the crowd. One can easily see the obsession of people here with celebrities.
People keep photos, posters, magazine covers cuttings of their favorite celebs in the room. The Indian audience loves to visit the events attended by celebrities. Even a single photograph or an autograph through their favorite celebutante is enough to make the day.
Now, with the apex level of popularity, these superstars also work in advertising or brand endorsement. Like the movies, these celebrity ads are also popular in India. They had also resulted in a high revenue generation.
Let us take a look at how all these celebrity endorsements started in India.
What is celebrity endorsement?
It means getting the face of celebrities for branding. For a very long time, we can see the celebs collaborated with the brands. For instance, classic promotions like the Thums up ad highlighting Sushmita Sen and Salman Khan, Pepsi ad with Sachin Tendulkar, and Amitabh Bachchan (Chote miyaan, Bade miyaan), Sonali Bendre in Nirma soap advertisement are all some of the top ads.
It is a technique of using celebrities to represent the brand. The main focus of such endorsement is on the sides of marketing and sales. Through the branding, the customers connect with the brands as they are already attached with glam faces.
The human mind tends to connect with the things or people they know. Through movies, media, etc., the celebs gain popularity, and therefore the people connect with them, either through their acting, dialogues, lifestyle, and many more reasons like these.
Do you know how it all started in India?
History of advertisement in India
The advertising history of India has a very steady growth till the ’90s. In the past times, most advertisements were in magazines and newspapers. The first advertising agency in India was set up in 1905. Its name was Dattaram & Co. It published its first advertisement in Hickey Bengal’s Gazette, the first English newspaper in India, founded in Kolkata.
Dattaram & Co. published many advertisements, but all of them were in newspapers and magazines. After some time, the era of advertisements came, and the market started depending on it.
The first-ever Indian TV advertisement was Gwalior Suitings in 1976. After that, advertisements started taking TV as its media. Later on, many ads came, like the advertisement of LUX soap, which looted hoards of popularity.
Evolution of celebrity endorsement in India
From newspapers, magazines to TV and radio, Indian advertisements evolved a lot in a short time. The iconic tagline, persona, and all came to the scene. ‘Lifebuoy hai Jahaan, Tandrusti hai wahan’ was one of the desired taglines, came to Indian TV through Lifebuoy advertisement in 1964. It is still the same.
One of the most adored characters was Gabbar Singh from the movie Sholay. He was picturized in the ad of Britannia Glucose D biscuits. From then onwards, the taglines and in-demand celeb faces came into view.
As increasingly more love for TV came into the picture, individuals began watching movies, and some of the roles became famous characters. It grew up the popularity of the celebrity playing their part. Gabbar was one amongst them. So, the ad agencies started featuring celebs to endorse the brand. It helped them a lot to spread their message to a vast audience.
Let me explain to you how the endorsement impacts consumer buying behavior.
Impact of celebrity endorsement on buying behavior
We remember the faces of people if they are in some controversy, some blockbuster movies, events, videos, etc. These big names are considered social media figures. Whatever the big names address, it will become a message for the audience since they have massive followers.
The people look after their hard work, personality, way of living, and. Additionally, they also consider some of the actors and actresses as motivation. They learn a lot from them. Therefore there are always millions of eyes on a celebrity.
It is the reason for using them for endorsement. The VIPs help the promoting group in spreading their message to an enormous crowd, simply during some seconds advertisement video or a web-based media post.
The current market of celebrity endorsement
Now, India is resulting in the CAGR(Compounded Annual Growth Rate) of 10% steadily in celebrity branding between the years 2007 to 2021. Along with celebrities, there are influencers also participating in endorsements.
Apart from the celebs working in the movies, there are many other big names like sports celebrities, youtube stars, and many more so far. Most of their earnings are also from the endorsement.
The valuation of Shahrukh Khan in the year 2014 was $165 million, which was before long surpassed by Virat Kohli, having a brand valuation of $237.7 million, and now he is on the first spot on the list.
Several brands are launching every year in the Indian market. With the increase in their demand, they make the celebs their brand ambassadors.
There are other ways also through which the brands approach the celebs for branding. It includes a one-time appearance that we see in Flipkart Big Billion Days sale, endorsed by MS Dhoni, Amitabh Bachchan, Deepika Padukone, and many more. Other is contract-based. Under this, the celeb is under a contract for a fixed term.
Higher the popularity higher will be the valuation of celebrities. In today’s market, there are about millions and billions paid to personalities for a single shoutout.
Even the startups are also able to represent their business through the superstars. It is through the Brand promotion companies in india like Celefi and Cameo. Celefi is popular in India, while the companies overseas use Cameo as their platform.
If you also want to utilize celebs or influencers for branding, you can use these websites. They are the trusted ones and provides the best VIP as per the budget.
