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Tag: Endorsements

  • GUEST COLUMN: How Micro-Influencers become creators for brands

    GUEST COLUMN: How Micro-Influencers become creators for brands

    Mumbai: Until recently, the concept of brand endorsements and the way brands reach their target audience has recreated the social media landscape. A newer concept of influencer marketing has emerged in the era of the creator economy. Considering the explosion of social media and creator tools in the market, the creator economy has grown from $1.7 billion in 2016 to $6.5 billion in 2019 further crossing $9.7 billion in 2020.

    Given the accelerated transformation of the advertising economy to the creator economy, it has become necessary for brands to develop relationships with influential personalities and promote their products and ideas. Creator economy is centered on creators becoming influencers, someone with 10,000 to 1 million followers or micro-influencers with 500 to 10,000 followers. Brands partner with influencers on a smaller scale to generate authenticity in brand promotion instead of focusing on sponsored ads or paying hefty to branded influencers for their stardom.

    Influencers vs Micro-influencers

    Influencer marketing is at its peak. It has gone beyond the brands partnering with people with thousands and millions of followers and promoting their product to their audience. Having said that customers are more likely to purchase from a brand they can connect with. That’s where influencer marketing comes into the picture as an effective tool for word-of-mouth marketing and increasing social media authenticity. Hence, brands pay macro influencers to create and publish content based on their products or sponsor their events, as large-scale outreach programs.

    Micro-influencers, on the contrary, have fewer followers and are extremely valuable for brands looking to increase their awareness within a particular niche. With the surge in the popularity of micro-influencers, younger generations are coming forward with their charismatic appeal and niche expertise, leading the brands to capitalize on the youth marketing techniques. For instance, go-to Gen Z fashion brand – Urbanic created a 150+ community of best-dressed campus students aka creators, who created some fabulous content and engaged in a variety of brand collaborations, drove meet & greets to drive brand sales, digital visibility and grow community size.

    Collaborating with the right influencers

    Influencers are appreciated for their real content. They are considered to be more authentic and community oriented than a brand or a celebrity promoting a product. Known for being more engaging with the TG, the influencers typically get more time to connect with their follower base. This helps in creating a loyal audience for the brand. Instead of having followers with varied interests, demographics or geographics, these influencers tend to be more specialized and niche specific.

    In the fast-paced creator economy, influencer marketing offers several benefits to brands. As social media algorithms continue to change, brands struggle to reach their audience in broader terms. According to the facts – influencers with more than 5,000 followers are usually responsible for 70 per cent of all reach in the influencer landscape. Hence, a smaller follower base of micro-influencers can actually create engagement for the brand by making the content appear right in front of the eyes of the target audience. Furthermore, it becomes more cost-effective to collaborate with micro-influencers as brands can share free product samples or coupons with micro-influencers.

    Strong community building

    Social media connects people on a global level. However, a community is built with like-minded people who have common ideas and thoughts to share. Though micro-influencers do not have instant name recognition, their narrower reach and specific content build a strong community of followers for brand endorsements. Even with a smaller reach, micro-influencers have higher credibility than some high-profile endorsements. This helps brands to create connections with the targeted audience with local interests that can have a huge impact on the brand’s marketing front.

    Brands experiencing growth

    Onboarding the right influencers and empowering them to create real content is always followed by long-term relationships that further depend on the success metrics of the campaign. However, brands still find it challenging to evaluate the results of a micro-influencer marketing campaign. Differentiating between real influencers and people who buy inorganic followers that can offer no guarantee of engagement or success remains the biggest concern of the brands. Those looking to experience growth and engagement need to explore different marketing perspectives and tools such as followers, profiles, quality of comments, profile visits and even previous experience of influencers as brand endorsers to evaluate results. They can prove to be important numbers to quantify success metrics and can work as great ROI predictors for brands as well as micro-influencers.

    The author is Sociowash co-founder Pranav Agarwal

  • ASCI unveils paid service to help endorsers evade misleading claims in ads

    ASCI unveils paid service to help endorsers evade misleading claims in ads

    Mumbai: Brand endorsers can now avail of paid advisory service from the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) to avoid making misleading claims in advertisements, the self-regulatory body of the advertising industry announced. ASCI has launched the ‘Endorser Due Diligence’ service in order to help endorsers follow the ASCI code and abide by the rules laid down in the Consumer Protection Act (2019), which places an obligation on them to undertake due diligence for advertisements they appear in.

    “Endorsers, particularly celebrities, have a huge fan following and they enjoy the trust of millions of consumers,” said ASCI chairman Subhash Kamath. “There is, therefore, a direct moral and now, legal responsibility that they bear to ensure that they do not make representations in ads that could be considered misleading. ASCI has always required celebrities to be mindful of what they endorse in advertisements, and now the law too requires them to do due diligence in this regard.”

    The service will offer ASCI’s expertise in advertising assessment, including technical claims that are part of the advertisement, for an added fee. ASCI has established a panel of experts, from over 20 disciplines, ranging from advertising regulation and legal, ayurveda, microbiology, electronics, market research, nutrition, dentistry, product formulations, financial services, and so on. The panel will assess the representations, statements, and claims in the advertisement from a consumer and technical perspective, examine the evidence in support of the claim where necessary, and thereby help the endorser conduct their due diligence.

    The advertisements can be sent to ASCI at any stage, including pre-production. This ensures that the endorser can do their independent due diligence before the advertisement is produced, said the statement.

    The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 provides for the imposition of fines or even prohibiting the endorser of a false or misleading advertisement from making an endorsement of any product or service for a period, which may extend to one year. However, the act also provides for a waiver of such penalties or suspension if the endorsers have exercised due diligence to verify the claims made in any advertisement endorsed by them.

    “Endorsers may not always be experts when it comes to the products they push and the claims they make,” said ASCI secretary-general Manisha Kapoor. “The law makes endorsers liable for the advertisements they appear in, hence Endorser Due Diligence becomes a critical need. ASCI’s service that is speedy, confidential, and based on the assessment of a multi-disciplinary panel can help endorsers do their due diligence in a timely and comprehensive manner, ensuring that consumers are not misled and that the endorser too, fulfills their legal obligations.”

    Around 50 per cent of endorsements in India feature celebrities compared to around 20 per cent in the US, according to Duff & Phelps’ ‘Celebrity Brand Valuation Report.’ The same report puts the overall brand value of the top 20 endorsers of 2020 in India at an estimated $1 billion. The TAM AdEx report on celebrity endorsement says that overall, more than 25 per cent of advertisements telecast on TV in 2021 were endorsed by celebrities, of these more than 85 per cent were endorsed by film stars.

    Similar to the Advertising Advice service offered by ASCI, Endorser Due Diligence will be confidential and non-binding and will be issued in the name of the endorser, the organisation said. 

  • Are celebs killing their brand by endorsing too many products?

    Are celebs killing their brand by endorsing too many products?

    MUMBAI: How often do we come across an ad that features a Bollywood celebrity? Maybe, a lot, and it is mostly driven by people’s affinity for seeing their favourite celebrity on television, outside of movies.

    The brand value added by a celebrity to the product is immediate and palpable. When a celebrity signs an endorsement deal with a company, an element of legitimacy is suddenly attached to the product simply because of the power of the name backing it up. Even though viewers enjoy watching their favourite celebs on screen advertising products, more often than not, the message becomes a little too much about the celebrity rather than the product itself. 

    Today, there are numerous celebrities endorsing multiple brands. Two such popular celebrities are Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan, who endorse multiple brands across a range of categories from fashion, food and beverage, consumer products and others. 

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    Does a celebrity’s association with several brands reduce his brand equity? It is quite likely that their endorsements may not resonate as well when the same face woos them with the goodness of everything–from biscuits to oil to a direct-to-home connection to chocolates. The case is similar is for female celebrities. Deepika Padukone promotes Coca-Cola, L’Oreal, Venus and Axis Bank while Katrina Kaif backs Mango Slice, Veet, Pantene and Lux.

    But the question here is whether these celebrities actually consume or use the products that they endorse. Highly unlikely is the quick answer.

    Although the Advertising Standards Council (ASCI) has laid down guidelines for celebrity endorsements, not much seems to be followed in the industry. The ASCI’s guideline for celebrity endorsement states:

    a) Testimonials, endorsements or representations of opinions or preference of Celebrities must reflect genuine, reasonably current opinion of the individual(s) making such representations, and must be based upon adequate information about or experience with the product or service being advertised.

    b) Celebrity should do due diligence to ensure that all description, claims and comparisons made in the advertisements they appear in or endorse are capable of being objectively ascertained and capable of substantiation and should not mislead or appear deceptive.

    Celebrities that do not abide by these guidelines have to pay a fine of Rs. 20 lakh or more according to the current limit for appearing in a single advertisement or a campaign or per year, whichever is more. 

    public://SHAHRUKH-KHAN-COLLAGE.jpg

    But the celebrity ad world isn’t entirely about the money after all and not every celebrity wants the limelight all the time. Some are picky about the brands they associate themselves with. Cricketer Virat Kohli and Bollywood actor Aamir Khan are paragons for this endorsement phylosophy. 

    According to a recent report by corporate advisers Duff & Phelps, Kohli is India’s most valuable brand surpassing even Shah Rukh Khan who held the title since 2014. While the early glamour may have pushed Kohli to advocate Pepsi and Fair & Lovely Men, he eventually decided to move away from these brands. He was signed up as the brand ambassador for Pepsi in 2011 but refused to renew the contract, which ended in April 2017, saying at the time that he would not ask people to consume something that he himself does not. Kohli said, “The things that I’ve endorsed in the past—I won’t take names—but I feel that I don’t connect to [the brands] anymore. If I myself won’t consume such things, I won’t urge others to consume it just because I’m getting money out of it.”

    Many saw his move as a sign of a man who believes in himself and someone who has invested his mind, heart and body in his role as a leader in society. “I want to give something to people that I use myself. One of the reasons I decided not to sign Pepsi is that I have undergone a lifestyle change. It might have been big money for me and a very lucrative deal but I opted out as we need to have some thought behind the products we promote and we must understand that people trust us,” he added. He no longer endorses fairness creams or products of that genre since equating success with skin fairness goes against his values.

    It is no coincidence that the number of celebrity endorsements has gone up in recent years. A 2015 study by Nielsen found that famous faces work best on millennials and gen Z– the two generations most likely to spend the most compared to their predecessors and with aims of having a topnotch lifestyle.

    In 2014, Bachchan had also cut off ties with Pepsi after 16 long years of commitment, when a young girl asked him why he promoted a product her teacher branded as ‘poison’. Bachchan, having realised the impact on the minds of people, even urged his son Abhishek and daughter-in-law Aishwarya Rai Bachchan to be careful about their ties.

    Studies have shown that consumers have better brand recall of products backed by celebrities. Celebrity backing adds awareness, trust and familiarity–important objectives for marketers to achieve. People believe that by using products their favourite celebrities endorse, they will be able to emulate their lifestyle.

    Similarly, Aamir Khan has been known to be picky about which products he wants to endorse. Although the actor was associated with Coca-Cola, Godrej, Titan Watches, Tata Sky, Toyota Innova, Samsung, Monaco Biscuits in the past, he decided to move away from products that he does not believe in and does not consume himself. 

    The actor witnesses backlash after his intolerance comment in 2016 and the uproar impacted his endorsed brand Snapdeal that bore the brunt with more than 7 lakh customers uninstalling the app. Soon after the incident, Khan was removed as the India brand ambassador for Incredible India and was replaced by Bollywood actress Priyanka Chopra. The actor did not have any endorsements for nearly two years as brands did not want to associate themselves with negative publicity. 

    The actor was recently announced as the India and Pakistan brand ambassador for Chinese handset maker Vivo, which many see as his big come back. Brands of Desire CEO Saurabh Uboweja believes that Khan, as a brand, doesn’t need comebacks to make his point. “He is a brand in every way and on the contrary, it is a big opportunity for Vivo to establish itself as a mainstream brand,” he says.

    While the over exposure does harm the brand equity of celebrities in the long term, being selective with endorsements is beneficial to the star as well as the brands.

    Also Read :

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    The ins and outs of femvertising

    The influence of influencer marketing

    Kohli brand driving on the up

    Gender stereotyping remains the template for weight-loss ads