8/8/2019 Brand Ambassadors - Foreign vs Local

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Brand Ambassadors: Foreign vs. Local

By Sarosh Waiz

Sarosh Waiz works as an Activation Strategist at GroupM Pakistan. He is also a Blogger, a freelance

Social Media Consultant and the owner of PakMediaBlog.net

Have you seen those star studded ads that fill up all the commercial breaks that you have to go through

while watching your favorite TV program? And out of those, the commercials that tend to stand out to

get your attention are actually the ones that are either very creative, or have a familiar celebrity

endorsing a brand. Celebrity endorsement tactics have been around since decades and it is one of the

major wagons for the brands to cling on in order to get quick noticibilaty and publicity. The core idea

about celebrity endorsements has always been about associating the brand with someone popular in

order to gain relative popularity for the brand as a result.

More recently, the celebrity endorsements have broken cross-country barriers in terms of marketing

and communication. Both local and international advertisers have been using foreign celebrities to

address to the local audience for their marketing & communication purposes. Now the question is that

is it fair to give more priority to foreign celebrities as compared to local stars by the advertisers? A lot of

debate on this topic has been going on especially after two famous Indian actresses Karina Kapoor and

Katrina Kaif were caught posing for some of our local and international brands. I think it is not really

viable to get in to this debate, because it lacks substance and to be honest we cannot just take a few

examples and get anti about foreign celebrities. As marketers, there would always be a reason if this is

being done.

One of the opinions that ignited this discussion was that the foreign stars should not be taken up by the

local advertisers at all, and preference should be given to our own stars instead. Although this seems to

be a legitimate suggestion, but there are various justifications by the marketers to counter that. First of

all, there is a dearth of celebrities in our country. At one point in history, cricket used to provide us with

inspirational celebrities that the whole nation loved to associate with; but with the decline of Pakistans

cricket team during the last decade, many brands are reluctant to associate themselves with cricketers

and the game itself. Despite this there still are examples of Pakistani cricketers appearing in local

advertisements such Shahid Afridi for Head and Shoulders and Mohammad Amir for Pepsi Badal Dou

Zamana. Not too long ago, even Rexona - Date with Fate featured Wasim Akram for their major

campaign.

Secondly, we have a limited number of celebrities that have either been over-used or they are in the

process of being over-used. A few out of those prominent celebrities would include Shaan, Ali Zafar, Atif

Aslam, Viniza and Strings. The point of getting a celebrity on-board for a brand is not fulfilled when the

same brand ambassador is also endorsing tons of other products. Similarly, when one celebrity has

signed an exclusive contract with one advertiser, there are not many celebrity options left for other

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advertisers. How many people did not like Ali Zafars move from Telenor to Mobilink? For some reason, I

still recall Ali Zafar with Telenor Talk Shawk rather than Mobilink Jazz.

So the point boils down to the reality, that celebrity figures in Pakistan come from different categories

such as Music, Fashion, Television, Politics, Sports, Achors and VJs. And how can we forget Lollywood

that has provided us celebrities like Reema, Shaan, Saima and the others with whom brands like Lux,Pepsi, Tarang and Mobilink have already associated in the past? Isnt it unfair to state that Lux should

have associated with a local celebrity, even though they have done it time and again in the previous

years? Or Firdous Lawn should have Resham starred for them instead? Do you think Firdous Lawn would

have been able to create the awareness that it did by not having Karina on their communication? Atleast

I dont think so. When it comes to airing commercials, marketers try to understand audience affinities

before going on air with their ad-copy, and this of course also gives them an idea about the celebrity

relevance and popularity within the target audience.

Another point of discussion is then why dont we create our own celebrities? Well it would have been

great if we could, but Indians bank on Bollywood followed by Cricketers. Can we encash on Lollywood as

much as Indians do on Bollywood since our cricket is not providing us with celebrities? Rather than

pointing fingers and blaming each other, its about time that as marketers, we should collaborate to

offer solutions instead and create a platform to breed celebrities for the future. However, Id still like to

re-instate that it is unfair to say that Pakistani brands do not associate with local celebrities as this has

certainly never been the case.