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Bollywood stars may jostle for roles on the silver screen, but they are also vying for other lucrative deals — company endorsements — with celebrity branding surging in India but amid fears the race is out of control.

In a rapidly expanding market, nothing makes a product stand out better than a familiar face.

Moreover, Bollywood stars can promote from 10 to 15 products a year, making $1 million or more from each deal, which can far exceed their earnings from movies or television shows.

Take Bollywood A-lister Amitabh Bachchan, one of India’s biggest stars and the lord of endorsements. He has sold everything from a premium suit brand to India’s largest-selling auto brand, cement, cold cream, chocolates and hair oil.

Shah Rukh Khan, another of India’s top leading men, endorses Tag Heuer watches, Pepsi and a whitening cream.

A recent article by Indian magazine Open estimated these actors each earned about $30 million over five years in endorsements.

Brand ambassadors are seen as a good way to get high visibility in a short time in a huge, fragmented market.

But in one of the world’s most competitive markets, big names are entering endorsement deals at such a rapid pace that critics say it is almost at random, with no thought to their image or the brand.

“Everyone just wants to make money. It’s plain greed. Most Indian brand ambassadors look at it as a business, a short-term thing,” said Anirban Blah, of Kwan Entertainment and Marketing Solutions, a firm that manages Bollywood stars Ranbir Kapoor and Genelia D’souza.

There was a time when cricketers and other sports stars starting notching up deals alongside actors, but the tide has again shifted toward the stars of the big screen and television with the country’s obsession with Bollywood glamor.

The celebrity endorsement market in India is estimated to be worth about $185 million a year. Last year Bollywood stars accounted for 80 percent of endorsements on Indian television.

Sports stars took up just 15 percent of screen time, according to figures released by TAM Media Research.

“The kind of reach and aspirational quality that Bollywood actors and actresses will give you is unparalleled, especially in a cinema-crazy nation like India. The minute they are associated with a brand, they give it credibility,” said Rajnish Sahay, chief executive of Percept Talent Management.

But brand consultants are starting to voice concerns that the rush to sign deals has become indiscriminate and stars are not really concerned about which products they are backing.

Kiran Khalap, co-founder of brand consultancy chlorophyll, said this practice could be “disastrous to the entire string of brands they are associated with,” and end up hurting both the brand and the star.

“The more reckless [brand ambassadors] are in signing up, the faster they are sending the signal that they do not really stand for anything! They have no central belief in life,” said Khalap.

Actor Bachchan, 67, took on the role of brand ambassador for the Indian state of Gujarat this year.

Several groups, including sections of India’s ruling Congress party, questioned Bachchan’s association with Gujarat’s right-wing Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who is accused of turning a blind eye to the 2002 riots in the state.

Blah said he now advises his clients to associate themselves with brands that may not be as prominent but are aspirational, while companies are adding clauses into contracts that take into account behavior and extraordinary circumstances.

He cited actor Aamir Khan, who is known to be extremely involved in his advertisements and is a rare example of a Bollywood star who has planned his brand image down to a tee.

Khan, star of the hit comedy “3 Idiots,” broke the record for a celebrity endorsement earlier this year when he landed a 300 million to 350 million rupees ($6.5 million to $7.6 million) a year deal with Etisalat, the UAE telecoms giant, which has just entered the Indian market.

Most other Bollywood stars can bank about as much as 100 million rupees a year for each of their endorsements.

Advertising guru Prahlad Kakkar said it was the brands’ fault if they rushed to get a celebrity name that did not necessarily fit the product.

“Ultimately, it is the brand that suffers. But we are too lazy to think about brand values, whether a certain celebrity will suit those values or not, and the same goes for the endorser as well,” he said.
 

Reuters