Balancing Act decodes whether a celebrity brand endorser is necessary to build a mass brand in India today without an A-list celebrity endorser:

 

Balancing Act between the brand value and sales, a brand ambassador is a standout amongst the strongest to keep up the celebrity’s popularity. The influence a celebrity can have on generating brand awareness plays a pivotal role in ensuring the success of a campaign.

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Film stars currently dominate the endorsement industry with 76% share of the endorsement market followed by sportsperson by 12%. We at Balancing Act manage to bag deals in both the categories that help the brands to evolve them from plain vanilla endorsement to fulfilling partnerships with the celebrities. Personal Care, Hygiene and the Food & Beverages industry contributed the largest chunk (33%) of celebrity led Campaigns. 

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Choosing the right Endorser for your brand is a very important aspect for brands to keep in mind. We at Balancing Act help the brands to choose and selecting right celebrities and associating them with the brands to ensure promise, believability and delivery of the intended effect.  

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One of our running campaigns is for Nivea Men in association with Ranveer Singh who gives a refreshing performance to which the consumers are convinced to buy the product. Nivea roped in Ranveer Singh in 2018 and will be actively involved in a series of marketing and customer initiatives apart from being featured in the brand’s advertising and digital campaigns. Check out their latest Ad film for Fresh Active Deo- Balancing Act values proposition of the brand in the market and provide you with solutions right from the process of choosing the celebrity, contracting, negotiations and handling the logistics from start to end. Nivea experienced a growth of 400% in their market by choosing the right endorser to increase their purchasing volume. 

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Term Period 

 

Traditionally endorsements contract have generally been structured in two ways- The first includes a fixed term (1 or 2 years) and a fixed fee which the second includes a onetime engagement. It is a fixed sum of payment split across the pre and post endorsement cycle. The latter, a less popular form of engagement, involves a one time appearance by a celebrity for a specific event or a campaign. This may be in a form of a photo shoot, event or and endorsement.  Balancing Act partnered with Belvedere for one time association with Siddharth Malhotra in 2018 and Arjun Kapoor in 2019. It included a Print shoot which was curated by Balancing Act followed by TVC and an event by Belvedere. Similarly Colgate recruited Deepika Padukone & her mother and MS Dhoni for “Andar se Strong” Campaign as the brand ambassadors for Colgate Strong Teeth which was an engagement for a year including Print Shoot & TVC and an event.  The campaign unveils the softer side of the former captain’s personality as he shares ‘candid’ moments with his wife, and talks about making some hard choices in life.

 

Tapping Regional Markets: 

 

Brands are also going increasingly going regional in their endorsement strategy to cater to the heterogeneous peculiarities of Indian states. They are leveraging the equity that local celebrities enjoy. Regional specific commercials featuring Samantha Prabhu for Colgate Active Salt in Telegu  whereas Subashree Ganguly in Kolkata and Nagachaitanya Akkineni for Colgate Maxfresh have impacted the brand to look for better returns on their investment through a step up on regional markets. Colgate being an important brand for Balancing  Act  have always ensured to tap all the regional markets with the regional specific celebrities to establish a deep rooted connection of the regional audience. 

 

Mainstream Digital Medium 

Given how mainstream digital medium has evolved, a large part of advertising markets have been experimenting with digital Ads to cater to the brands and celebrity specific audience. Reebok curated a CGI content for their new collection- Kinectic Zigs with Varun Dhawan The stills were produced by Balancing Act and shot by Taras Taraporwala. The Images were released on Varun Dhawan’s instagram handle and on Reebok India’s official Instagram page. Similarly Asian Paints experimented with Vir Das for their “On Time Painting” campaign conceptualized and curated by Balancing Act  focusing on the makeover of Vir’s office in just 3 days. The film was released on Youtube having  54 lakhs views.

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Celebrity Endorsements in Social Media :

Celebrities have a positive Impact on a consumer’s buying decision. Perhaps the primary reason marketers leverage the power of celebrity is to generate attention about a product. It is easy for a festive product launch to be forgotten soon given consumers short attention span. Balancing Act helps you to choose the right kind of celebrities with the correct numbers that help to reach out to the audience to gain maximum attention the product. One such campaign was with Neha Dhupia and Soha Ali Khan where Vodafone chose to endorse them for a one off post campaign on Social Media to create awareness and outreach of their “Vodafone Friendship “ plan to the audience. Similarly, Tourism of New Zealand associated with renowned cricketers- Hardik Pandya & KL Rahul for an Instagram post campaign to promote their brand effectively.  

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--Moksha Makwana

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