Celebrity endorsements have long been magic tools in the hands of marketers to attract audiences, increase brand awareness and recall and come to a company's rescue during any crisis situations. Celebrities add value to a product/brand. The pros and cons of celebrity endorsement have long been debated. But a big question remains: Do customers change their priorities or choices just because a particular product/service is endorsed by a celebrity? Does the presence of a celebrity really affect consumer behavior?

HLL pioneered the concept of celebrity endorsement in India and has been using popular Hindi film stars to endorse its beauty soap, Lux, since the 1950s. The Lux Soap ads were the first to cash in on star power in a strategic way. Perhaps as a result of this, the Lux brand has been among the top three soap brands in the country for much of its lifetime.

The mid-1980s witnessed the trend budding and many prominent brands used this strategy to reach the customers. A few examples of celebrities and the brands endorsed by them include: Tabassum (Prestige Pressure Cookers), Jalal Agha (Pan Parag), Kapil Dev (Palmolive Shaving Cream) and Sunil Gavaskar (Dinesh Suitings). In recent times, the popular celebrity endorsers include: Shah Rukh Khan (Pepsi, Hyundai Santro, Sunfeast, and Navratan, etc.), Aamir Khan (Coca-Cola, Tata Sky, etc.), Aishwarya Rai (Nakshatra, Garnier, L'Oréal), Amitabh Bachchan (BPL, ICICI, Parker Pens, Maruti Versa, Pepsi, Reid & Taylor, Nerolac Paints, and Dabur), Sachin Tendulkar (Boost), Rahul Dravid, Hrithik Roshan (Reliance), etc.The success of the products endorsed by the celebrities exemplifies the benefits of star appeal. Celebrity endorsement results in an association and emotional unity with the target group.

In the Indian context, it would not be an exaggeration to state that celebrity endorsements can aggrandize the overall brand. Numerous examples epitomize this claim. Coke, which did not use stars for its ad strategies internationally, used celebrities for the first time in India and the result was a huge success. Beverages major, Coca-Cola has launched a "Coca-Cola Open Happiness" campaign involving 360-degree communication effort in the country featuring the company's brand ambassador and Bollywood star Aamir Khan, as a part of its global campaign in the run-up to this year's Indian Premier League (IPL). Presence of Aishwarya Rai and Katrina Kaif has increased the recall value of Nakshatra. The Parker Pen brand, which by itself commands equity, used Amitabh Bachchan to revitalize the brand in India. According to Pooja Jain, Director, Luxor Writing Instruments Ltd. (LWIL), after the company roped in Bachchan for its ads, Parker's sales increased by about 30%.

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