BRAND WITHOUT BRAND AMBASSADOR

“Popular actor Vikram is now the brand Ambassador for Parle-G.”

“Asin the new brand ambassador of Lux.”

“Ranbir Kappor is Nokia’s brand ambassador.”

“Shah Rukh Khan, new brand ambassador for Pepsodent.”

What role does a brand ambassador play in branding of a product?

Brand Ambassadors are like celebrities from outside world to lay men urging them towards the product; they personify the values of the brand and create aspirations. There is no denial that clever selection of brand ambassadors can really do wonders for some brands. But what really are the success factors having brand ambassador?

In this age and day product endorsement has taken many dimensions and one of these dimensions is the person who leverages on the credibility of his personality and following promote and providing greater visibility to a product, often with contracts by going as high as millions of dollars. But doing so this servers a tool that strengthens the company is communication strategy. These people are called brand ambassadors.

Although the exposure in this kind of marketing is less, the ambassadors deliver something much more strong and incredible. A word of mouth which people trust more than other died marketing techniques. A successful association with a brand ambassador sometime translates into stronger brand awareness campaign than millions of rupees spent on other marketing efforts such as advertising and promotion.

Now the question is why to use a brand ambassador? What actually is the power that brand ambassador exerts over the consumers to urge them?

One of the most important factor that attracts consumer’s mind is psychological factors such as motivation, perception, learning, believes and attitude. And these are the factors that a brand ambassador influences.

These people have such a strong impact of personalities that people sometime use brand 

ambassador as a tool for their product, like we seen the case of Junaid Jamshed clarifying Lays issue when it was hit by the accusation of using haram contents in its manufacturing.

Now companies need to take keen care while appointing celebrity to endorse a product, in all respect from thinking perspective of public to the requirement of the product. It is essential that the attributes of a celebrity like ability, fame, sincerity etc. Match the brand identity or the result mismatch will do more harm than good to the brand image.

Like Wasim Akram endorsing PEPSI and being diabetic at the same time and publicizing accu meters is not fully appreciated. PEPSI must have reckoned the damage of this to PEPSI’s image.

To me an ideal brand ambassador should be a loyal user of brand by choice (not like Shah Rukh Khan for Colgate), not by the opinion of others but by his own wisdom. He talks about the benefits and disadvantages of the brand, he promotes the brand wherever he can without knowing. He is the golden loyal customer which a brand should strive to find. This is the sort of loyal customer, which if given incentives to publicize a product would do an honest job.

This can be an example of ideal, true hardworking brand ambassador. May be one day we will see ordinary people will like us endorsing products like celebrities from a fantasy world but what will be the point of marketing then!

After all its all about who gets most attention.