“I do not work with small-time actors. My ad films always have celebrities.”
I was attending a seminar where a leading ad-film maker commented during his speech. Quite a feat to be proud of!!!
This is an issue that I have always encountered in this country.
Brands love celebrities!!!
Nothing wrong with that. There are quite a few benefits of celebrity endorsement in branding and advertising, the most important being our desire to live in reflected glory.
“If Amitabh Bachchan eats Cadbury’s chocolates, I should also eat them, no matter how unhealthy they are.”
But the logic stands only when Amitabh Bachchan is endorsing the brand personally.
What if Mr Bachchan is dancing around shouting, “Pappu pass ho gaya!”. Do we want to clone that character as well???
Ad men are very intelligent people. Why, then, do they engage celebrities as actors instead of brand ambassadors in ad films? Surely, this shoots up the ad costs at ten times than engaging a non-celebrity actor!
They know that the common Indian hardly distinguishes between the celebrity actors and the roles they play. Even the literate class would:
1) Think that the dialogues delivered by celebrities are their own, not those of the scriptwriters.
2) The characters played by the actors are representative of their own.
That is why we find celebrities getting trolled for offensive characters they play, like trolling Ranbir Kapoor for Animal.
That is why we feel that cinema stars are intellectually capable of representing us in the Assemblies and Parliaments.
It is high time we start isolating skills from the character.
(If not for anything, just to bring down our ad costs!!!)