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| Madhu Sapre And Milind Soman |
From creating an individual brand for themselves, the trend is now gravitating towards off-screen celebrity couples endorsing a brand together. The trend first started making sporadic appearances when actors Salman Khan and Sangeeta Bijlani, who were dating each other then, teamed up for a suiting and shirting advertisement, way back in the early 90’s. They were shortly followed by supermodels, Madhu Sapre and Milind Soman who posed for a shoe brand together. The Mumbai policeregistered a case in August 1995 against the couple for posing in the nude, wearing only the shoes and a python wrapped around them.
Since then, the ad world mostly only capitalised on the glamour of married celebrity couples until recently, where the trend seems to be veering once more towards unmarried couples. While the product’s brand value considerably increases this way, it becomes an issue when either parties involved break-up or God forbid, get married. Brand strategist, Harish Bijoor explains, “Typically, when celebrity couples aren’t married, the level of mystery and chemistry is pretty high. The younger generation today does not subscribe to norms. They are more likely to relate to an unmarried couple than a married one.ActorsAishwarya and Abhishek Bachchan are definitely less popular than actors Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan as the latter are not married. But the day they announce and get married, their brand value will diminish too.”
So is the brand’s market value at stake when the celeb couples in question decide to split or break-up? “It becomes a bit of a road block when couples endorsing a product together split up, but it invariably gets back to normal,” adds Bijoor.
Ad-man Kunal Shivdasani too is of the same opinion. “Marriage as a concept does not go down too well with the youth, it appeals more to the older generation. And it’s the youth, who’s the target audience for most ads today. And for them, life is all about living on the edge. Freedom means the world to them,” sumsup Shivdasani.
