Are movie stars being overburdened?

There is a delicious irony in what is going on right now as far as moral debates within and about Bollywood are concerned. Listen only if your ears can bear the shrill voice of the know-it-all Ms. Kangana Ranaut strutting about what good deeds are from the pulpit.

“Integrity is no longer just good for your conscience. Yeh naya Bharat hai, sudhar jao nahi toh Sudhar diye jaoge (This is the new Bharat, if we don’t improve we will be forced to),” she swaggers on her Instagram Story, along with a screenshot of an article about the latest celebs who have been tested for ED. Now, she is pretty much an outcast as far as most of the Bollywood world is concerned.

The irony is made all the more vivid by the fact that in talking about a new Bharat, one cannot overlook the fact that she is unconsciously, or perhaps quite deliberately, supporting the current government. Their slogans instill her enthusiasm and their actions drive her. Ranaut unconsciously misses her irony that her support cannot merit scrutiny only when it concerns business, but must avoid scrutiny when it entertains political leanings.

In my 30 years of image management, I have studied marketing tools intensely and determined how far love for a brand can change. Image management data only suggests that movie stars matter a lot in India. When it comes to the parameters that brands play with, there is weak evidence of a trend toward leveraging movie star endorsements. But like the legendary David Ogilvy dilemma, I’m not ready to testify that movie actors matter in all business. Certainly, without better data, I would balk at their high endorsement fees.

This is a dilemma unique to India. Note that only about 20% of all advertising worldwide uses celebrities of any kind. Unlike other regions, in Indian advertising, a film actor contributes his 80% of all celebrity endorsements. It is like no other. No, not even our poor cult favorite cricketer can come close.

If we limit ourselves to the business world, there is cause for concern. There is no doubt that Bollywood has harbored and hatched its fair share of bad eggs in its time. Unsurprisingly, it turned out to be a Ponzi scheme after a TV ordered but never delivered despite being sold on an e-commerce site that may have featured Big Bachchan in the ad. From the crypto schemes that were supported by Govinda to the current anxiety over gambling. There was a huge number of star-supported sites, but the incidents were a mix of trivial and serious.

Things have gotten much worse since a court ruled in 2014 that actors could be liable for damages to consumers if they endorsed products they knew could cause harm. are doing. This crucial epistemological gap, in which guilt is based on knowledge, leaves courts with a range of allegations, including what is support, what is outright fraud, what is an error in judgment or convenient ignorance. continues to get busier.

For most stars today, the dilemma is twofold. In most cases, they have no means of proving the provenance of what they stand for, while at the same time, the persistence of being known to have short careers where they need to maximize their income are under a lot of pressure. If you wait too long, some people will be waiting to get right back into their shoes. All too often, these pressures require cutting corners, and it is when blind people are rounded up that they come face to face with the gravity of the law.

Lawmakers and agencies have yet to grapple with the fact that the jury is still out on whether movie star endorsements matter as much as we claim. There is also a larger question that needs to be further distilled: does the advertiser have a way to verify the legitimacy of the product or service they are promoting?

Does it impose the burden of being nothing more than a celebrity in the fluid moral world we all move through? The state needs to be in the driver’s seat when deciding these ethical conundrums. be. Star is certainly not ready for that.

(Dilip Cherian, founding partner of Perfect Relations, is a public relations consultant and branding strategist. Twitter: @DILIPtheCHERIAN)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author’s own. Does not necessarily reflect his DH views.