Oh, what a beautiful morning! I turn onto the main road only to stare at the enormously gigantic billboards and flex banners featuring pretty girls from Bollywood. In the Pakistani context, it would not be presumptuous to state that celebrity endorsements by Bollywood actresses can and in fact, have successfully managed to aggrandise the brands involved. Passing by the roads of Lahore these days, I am forced to contemplate and have second thoughts about my location status. Whether I am really in Lahore or not: that is the question. It appears as if I am watching a Bollywood movie or taking a walk through the streets of Delhi, where every other pole is lined up with a banner of a visibly beautiful Indian actress wearing a – not so visibly in focus, lawn print (I still am in serious doubts whether the celebrity is endorsing the product or the product is endorsing the celebrity).
Pakistan, just like India, is one country which has always idolised stars of the celluloid world. Therefore, it makes tremendous sense for a brand in Pakistan to procure a celebrity for its endorsement. But despite the obvious economic advantage of using relatively unknown celebrities or Lollywood actresses for that matter, as endorsers of the advertising campaigns; the choice of Bollywood actresses to fulfill that role has become common practice for lawn brands competing in the lawn-race. The objective for a celebrity endorsement of this sort is clearly to garner faster brand recognition in an attempt to win the customer preference and sell the product. And Bollywood actresses have no doubt helped the lawn brands to stand out from the surrounding clutter of ever-increasing lawn brands, improving their communicative ability and brand recall. Just like I remember that Firdous became the pioneer and talk of the town by endorsing ‘Kareena Kapoor’ for their lawn prints; I can also recall my male friends’ enthusiasm on waking up one fine day to see their epitome of Bollywood beauty endorsing a product of their least concern. I am not sure about the target audience of these lawn prints, but the males did and still continue to get a good eye candy of these celebrities coming straight from the neighbouring country.
On the flip side, recently there has been a massive uproar among the leading industrialists, including people from the textile industry, regarding the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status to India, trade liberalisation and phasing out of the negative trade list with India in order to secure the domestic industry. Seems like cognitive dissonance is playing its cards quite perfectly because there is a strong lack of agreement between the beliefs held by the group and their actions. The irony of the situation is that even when the textile industry is taking a heavy toll on the situation, it is choosing the favoured nation for endorsing and selling the textile products. Marketers claim that advertising simply mirrors the attitudes and values of the surrounding culture. Hence, you only make a celebrity endorse your product because you ‘believe’ that the ‘particular’ celebrity is the most favoured and popular among the target audience of your product. Therefore, the reality of the situation is that the industry somewhere in the corner of its mind also upholds this belief and regards the nation to be favourable while on the other hand opposes the decision of the government. Also, remember that ‘people make a nation’. I am certainly not favouring any side and neither giving my stance on the MFN status to India, however, the point that I am trying to make here is that if we are using our favoured nation’s people to sell our products then we should accept the recognition of their granted status as well. Let’s just open our eyes and step out of our shells of double-standards to embrace this reality, which is otherwise dirt-under-the-carpet.
The writer is Sub-Editor, Profit. She can be reached at syedmaheen@hotmail.com