Star Power is a Double Edged Sword

Using stars as brand ambassadors is a double edged sword.

If the star does well, the brand grows. But, if the star falls from grace, then the brands gets to run for its life.

Recently, I went to the petrol pump of an oil company, which uses the cricket star Dhoni, to sell its Speed brand of high speed petrol. whenever, I used to visit them, the attendants used to proudly narrate the advertisement's tang line, that implies that Speed is as fast as Dhoni!! But after the Indian team's disappointing defeat, I asked the attendant, should I be still filling Speed? He went blushing and requested me to bear with him and he told me that orders are already out to pull down Dhoni's poster. I am sure, all the brands that used Sachin or Blue Billion bombed and they cost the Brands dearly.

Guess the fate of Pepsi's Blue world Cup cola !!! A big flop show, for no fault of their's. The campaign went down with the Indian Cricket Team. Hey, now Pepsi knows why Blue is a sad color!

Having said that, Lux has been using Star power to its fullest, and its been that way for more that past two decades! Their mantra, is that whoever is at the top slot gets to be the Lux woman. They did mess it up a bit when they brought in Shahrukh Khan! However, they made it good by quickly and gracefully pulling the advert down by bringing in all the ex-Lux of heroines yesteryear's to tease the beautiful Khan. All the ex-Lux women bid her (oops! him) good bye.

But the most hilarious misfits was a recent advertisement in Corporate Dossier of Economic Times, where Sachin the ex-cricketer donned a business suit to tell us how to calculate Technology Cost of Ownership for Cannon business solutions. They probably are blissfully unaware of his academic achievements (or lack thereof).

Star power is OK for lifestyle goods but a strict NO-NO for high tech products.

(c) 2007, Ashish Banerjee, www.Ashish.Banerjee.name