Nawabs, Nudes, Noodles

by Ambi Parameswaran

  While female film stars have appeared in Lux advertisements for decades, the appearance of an Indian male film star in ads was a rarity. Archives tell us that in 1955, Kishore Kumar appeared in a print advertisement of Brylcreem, a product that was alien to the Indian male haircare regimen. There was even a Dilip Kumar-branded range of table tasties with products such as Royal Chutney, Mango Pickle and Lime Pickle from a company called Mother India Products. Brands like Bagpiper soda and Charminar cigarettes too used film stars in the ’70s. Shatrughan Sinha featuring in a Bagpiper soda print advertisement says, ‘Khoob jamega rang jab mil baithenge teen yaar – aap, hum aur Bagpiper Club Soda’ (The party will flow when we three friends sit together – you, me and Bagpiper Soda). Charminar used Jackie Shroff before he had joined the movies.

  One of the most interesting use of a celebrity, or should one say a film character, was the 1976 ad of Britannia Glucose-D biscuits. Departing from the norm of using a film star as a film star, the brand boldly used Amjad Khan as the character he had played in the superhit movie Sholay: Gabbar Singh. The brand was presented as ‘Gabbar ki asli pasand’. The ad film which ran in movie halls all over the country was shot in the same location as the original Sholay film, featuring the characters from the movie (Samba, Kalia and others) and captured the exact ethos of the dacoit-infested Chambal valley in Uttar Pradesh (recreated near Mysore in Karnataka). The ad played off the familiar scene and dialogues from the film and was a great hit with the movie-going audience. It should be said that it was a very bold move by a brand to use a negative film character to sell a product aimed at children. The clincher in the ad comes at the very end, again playing off a famous dialogue from the original film ‘Gaon ka har bachcha jaanta hai, ki Gabbar ki asli pasand kya hai! Asli cheese, samjhe! … Britannia Glucose-D biscuits, Gabbar ki asli pasand’ (Every kid knows Gabbar’s real choice! The real thing, Britannia Glucose biscuits! Gabbar’s real choice).

  The fact that the campaign created by Lowe Lintas was well-loved and the brand went on to gain market share was indicative of the changes in the way Indian consumers were perceiving and decoding advertising messages. It also proves how enduring a film character can be, especially when the film is a big hit. I cannot recall any other such bold use of a negative character to endorse a brand, at least one where the film got embedded in the collective memory of the consumers.

  In the ’80s, the brand Pan Parag used veteran actors Ashok Kumar and Shammi Kapoor to enact a familiar scene between the father of the bride and the father of the bridegroom in a typical North Indian wedding.

  Around the same time, we also had Vinod Khanna featuring in a Cinthol soap advertisement, running down a beach alongside a horse.

  From the ’50s to the ’80s, if at all a male star featured in an advertisement, it was an exception. Dilip Kumar rarely featured in an ad – the pickle ad was an exception that proved the rule – neither did Raj Kapoor nor Dev Anand. In the south, NT Rama Rao, Shivaji Ganesan, MG Ramachandran, Raj Kumar or Prem Nazir never did advertisements. I suppose they felt that their fans would see them as pure ‘commercial artists’ if they did endorsements for money. You should remember that in the south, the film stars had socio-political leanings which may have prevented them from embracing capitalistic brands.

  All this was set to change in 1995. Amitabh Bachchan was the ruling deity in Bollywood. Brand BPL was facing competition from international majors such as Sony, Toshiba as well as Indian players such as Videocon and Onida. In a coup of sorts, the brand roped in the Big B to endorse it. Amitabh had taken a break from films and was involved in building his company ABCL. The brand used him in a series of ads where he never openly endorsed the brand, but did speak of his passion for excellence and how one brand reflected this passion. In one of the ads, he named the various favourite characters he had played in his movies and how behind all of them was the passion for doing the best. The campaign went on to win accolades from both critics and consumers. BPL did get a leg up and went ahead, in image terms, of all Indian brands. Interestingly, in mid-2015, Pothy’s, a Tamil Nadu-based large garment retailer roped in Kamal Haasan for the first time to do an ad for them; the message was about ‘trust’, echoing what Big B did for BPL. Unfortunately, BPL did not sustain its brand-building efforts and virtually vanished in the 2000s in the face of fresh attack from the Korean majors such as Samsung and LG. At one time, BPL was the leader in frost-free refrigerators and washing machines; difficult to even imagine it today. But campaigns like the one featuring Big B created by the Delhi-based boutique Dhar & Hoon did keep the brand ticking in the late ’90s.

  If we do a flash forward to the 2000s, you cannot watch three ads without spotting a celebrity. Big film stars like Amitabh Bachchan, SRK, Aamir Khan, Ranbir Kapoor and Salman Khan have been used to sell colas, biscuits, hair oil, shampoos, creams, suitings, shoes, cars, motorbikes, mobile services, mobile handsets, undergarments – yes, SRK endorses Lux Cozi. If male film stars are ruling the air waves can cricket stars be far behind? Dhoni and Sachin have a list of brand endorsements that can rival that of the Khans. Female stars too are no spring chickens in the endorsement game. When the FCB Ulka team was looking for a female star to endorse a hair oil brand they could not find one among the top ten heroines who was free to do the endorsement. Stars like Katrina Kaif, Kareena Kapoor and Aishwarya Rai have a long list of endorsements. Even stars who entered the fray in the 2010s, such as Sonakshi Sinha, today have endorsements that run in to pages.

  BODY DOUBLES: Like in feature films, when using stars, body doubles are routinely used in ads as well. Sometime they are needed to perform special stunts like jumping off a cliff, car or bike.

  The South is now starting to resemble the North. The biggest star of the south, Rajnikanth, continues to dodge the brand bullets, but all the others are ready to play the game. Tamil stars like Vijay, Surya and Telugu superstar Mahesh Babu are today seen endorsing a variety of brands from two wheelers to tractors, biscuits to banyans, mobile services and more.

  Why this celebrity obsession, you may ask.

  The answer may lie somewhere else. Professor Arvind Rajagopal of New York University has been studying the changing Indian media scene, advertising and consumer perceptions. He points out that brands started using totems from the bazaar to connect with consumers. In the 1950s, it was common to see brands like Pears using images of gods to sell themselves. In fact, an old poster of Pears claims: ‘Pears soap, pure as the lotus, learn without sorrow, the eternal truth that youth is godlike and beauty is youth’. Burmah Shell, a multinational petroleum company used to distribute calendars featuring Hindu gods and godesses. The practice of using gods in the calendar continues to this date. Professor Rajagopal says that brands borrowed from bazaar art to connect with the consumers when selling products the consumer was not familiar with.

  It is likely this is happening at a larger scale in the 2010s. Brands are trying to drive usage down the socio-economic pyramid. Products like face wash and skin creams are now being targeted at the lower-middle classes. Shampoos and two-wheelers are also aiming to go down the pyramid. Mobile services too are targeting the lower classes. In all these cases, using a celebrity makes the message a lot more appealing and credible to the uninitiated. Consumers do know that the film star is not doing the endorsement for free, but still the celebrity face makes the story more aspirational and also maybe more credible.

  As a case in point, when Cadbury had to face negative reports about worm infestation – which happened in the shops, not in their factories – it used the power of Amitabh Bachchan to send out the message that their packages have been revamped to take care of any such problem. Reports say that they bounced back to their original market share in a few months.

  The second reason is that compared to the cost of running a campaign on mass media, the cost of a celebrity is today a lot more approachable. Many large brands look at a media spend in the region of ₹100 crores. In this context, paying SRK or Big B an amount equal to ₹10 c
rores does not seem too high, especially if their face will help the brand gain a few market-share points. As a related point, the corporatization of the Indian film industry has also played a role in the increased use of film stars. The days of income tax raids on film stars are all but over. Either they are no longer dodging taxes like they used to or they are managing to keep the news out of the media. Now there are more negative reports about corporate India’s tax troubles than film stars and their tax fiddles.

  The nature of using film stars is also changing. Most brands have figured out that just saying ‘I use Lux’ is no longer going to work, if all brands are using film stars. Savvy ad agencies have figured out that you need to ‘cast’ the film star as a character in a film rather than as a ‘star’. In the ad film for TVS Scooty, Priety Zinta was used as just a girl having fun on her scooter.

  In the film made by FCB Ulka for the two-wheeler Hero Pleasure, Priyanka Chopra plays a role of a smart young woman in a village, out at the railway station to meet the boy who her parents have chosen for her. Without revealing who she really is, she offers him a ride on her Hero Pleasure and when he speaks disparagingly about the girl his parents have chosen, who he thinks will be a ‘silly village girl’, she takes him for a merry ride only to drop him back at the station saying that ‘That’s your train and I’m Manjeet, your “silly village girl”’. The remorseful young man mutters to himself about what a mistake he had made.

  Films like these are becoming the norm, where the film star is not someone who is a star to be worshipped, but an actor playing out a role.

  One final reason film stars are becoming the staple in Indian ads is the fact that many marketers are resorting to pre-testing the ads. While pre-testing an ad, using a celebrity often helps the brand score many extra points. So for an additional cost of around 5 to 10 per cent of the annual media budget, if you can get a good score in the pre-test, the marketing manager is not going to let that go.

  From using film stars in ads, today brands are trying to get into films and television programmes. The corporatization of movies has also opened up the new avenue of brand placement in films. So a Hyundai car gets featured in an SRK movie and Nescafe in a Hrithik Roshan film. Thus, the film industry, film stars and brands have come together to make a nice threesome to sing the ‘buy me’ song to the enchanted moviegoer. This is not unique to India. Michael Schudson speaks of how producers of Steven Spielberg’s film ET contacted Mars candy company to ask if they would be interested in featuring M&Ms as the candy that cements the relationship between the alien and the human kid. The company did not show any interest. The producer, unbeknownst to Hershey, makers of Reese’s Pieces, decided to use their brand in the said place. They, however, requested Hershey before the movie release for a tie-in promotion. Hershey loved the idea and invested a million dollars in promotion. The sales of Reese’s Pieces reportedly jumped by 70 per cent in a month3! In India too, we have seen some very successful tie-ins – the oldest being Raj Kapoor’s Bobby with Escorts; recently, Tata Salt and Mary Kom; PK with Hero Cycles, Duracell and Cycle Agarbatti seem to have spelt magic in the marketplace – and more will follow as brand managers get to understand how to leverage the connection.

  Studies have been done to help marketers use celebrities better. Newspapers run articles featuring the star-power rankings every month.

  FCB Ulka’s Cogito Consulting’s study done in the year 2002, points towards three key dimensions: Trait Fit Index, how the traits of the brand fit with those of the celebrity; Compatibility Index, consumers perception of suitability of brand with celebrity and, finally, Aura of the celebrity4. The study showed that brands will do well to pick the star with the biggest aura; the rest are not as important as the aura of the star. No wonder there is a mad rush to sign the most popular star. The report concludes: ‘In sum, some celebrities can actually work if we make them work! To make a celebrity work harder, either choose one who is the latest craze or if you don’t have those kinds of money, get a personality who is a mirror image of your brand (be sure that he/she has at least some aura about him/her or at least has strong personality traits). But if you are a youth brand, then make sure that the latest heartthrobs are included in your portfolio. You cannot do without them. On the other hand, if you are a serious category, heartthrobs be damned! Choose someone who radiates maturity and credibility. So before you write that cheque worth crores, just think twice’5.

  Bole Mere Lips, I Love Uncle Chipps

  I THOUGHT I had escaped the world of chemical engineering when I entered the exciting world of advertising in 1979. But lo and behold, the first account I was asked to handle when I joined Rediffusion Advertising was a Pune-based engineering company called Wanson. My then colleague, Ashok Kurien – who later went on to start the enormously successful ad agency Ambience – was delighted to hand over the account to me and focus his energies on the exciting Garden Sari account. Though I cursed him squarely then, I later realized it was a godsend opportunity for me to work on an emerging B2B brand. Soon after the agency was briefed about the change in the name of the company from Wanson to Thermax. I immersed into reading about the achievements of Wanson India and, to my delight, discovered numerous innovations the company had pioneered such as thermal heating systems, waste heat recovery systems, pollution control systems etc. The six-ad press campaign the agency created had a strong emphatic headline that proclaimed ‘Thermax Does It’ and each ad had a case study to support the innovation claim. The then managing director of Thermax, Mr RD Aga, loved the approach and the way the company’s new logo was integrated into the campaign – Creative/Art Director Arun Kale’s masterstroke again – and offered to personally flesh out the copy matter of the ad. The original headlines and concept had been penned by Kamlesh Pandey and I thought it was an honour that the MD, also an Oxford English graduate, himself offered to help with the writing of the cases. The ad that came back from Thermax to the agency had the most perfect copy possible. Though Kamlesh Pandey tried his hand, he could not improve on what Mr Aga had written. He protested that I was supporting the client’s copy and not his version. Battle raged for a few days, but Mr Aga’s copy won the final vote.

  Kamlesh Pandey was one of the first of the new breed of copywriters to enter advertising in the mid-’70s. He was bilingual and could write a copy-heavy Hindi ad with equal alacrity as a copy-heavy English ad. He was also a genius at television scripts and went on to realize his dream of becoming one of the most celebrated Hindi movie scriptwriters – the superhit film Tezaab was written by Kamlesh. I got my first look at a screenplay when he proudly showed off his copy of the Casablanca screenplay to me!

  The Indian advertising scene was largely dominated by convent-educated boys in the ’60s and ’70s. They took over the task from the British admen who exited the country in the ’50s. Indian language writers were confined to the ‘Language Department’. That was set to change. Kamlesh was one of the first to break this thick wall with his ads for brands like Red Eveready, Red & White cigarettes, HMT bulbs and more, all originally created in Hindi. Piyush Pandey, Balki, Prasoon Joshi and others have continued to blaze new trails for Hindi and non-English-medium writers in the ’90s and 2000s. Creating a unique path just as Indian born English copywriters like Alyque Padamsee, Arun Kolatkar, Kersy Katrak and Frank Simoes did in the ’60s and ’70s.

  It was not as if Indian agencies had no competency in writing copy in Indian languages. Gerson da Cunha recalls that in the ’50s, Lintas was tasked to create print ads in fourteen different Indian languages by their client Lever Brothers for Dalda vanaspati. The agency did not attempt to write one ad and translate it into the various languages. It actually wrote each ad from ground up to reflect the food ethos of each linguistic community of India.

  Coming to the ’70s, while Kamlesh was writing Hindi copy, yet another linguistic revolution was taking place in the English film journalistic world. Devyani Chaubal, who used to be with the now defunct film magazine Star & Style, was bringing
Hindi words into English journalism. Shobhaa Kilachand (De) soon started building on this at Stardust, the gossipy film magazine she edited for many years with great success.

  In advertising too, the divide between Hindi and English copy was falling rapidly. The first big national campaign that used what we today call ‘Hinglish’ was the campaign for Uncle Chipps created by Contract Advertising, Delhi. The jingle and line went on to be on the lips of many Indians, not just because the line literally was ‘Bole mere lips, I love Uncle Chipps’ (My lips say, I love Uncle Chipps). The brand from Amrit Agro Ltd was launched in 1992 and had a jingle that, for the first time, used English and Hindi words together. The language wall had finally fallen. The brand went on to become the biggest-selling branded chips in the country and was finally sold to Frito-Lays (Pepsico Foods) in 2000.