Lending luxury
If you were to look into the crystal ball of luxury marketing in india, what would you see?
Shonali, it looks all fuzzy for sure. However, let me make an attempt to answer your question.
And let me be a maverick on this. In the future, people on the second rung of the ladder for luxury products may not want to buy at all. There will emerge a strong underground movement that will lend luxury brands to those who wish to use them. The idea is simple. Why own a mint-condition luxury brand when you use it so rarely? Why sink in so much money and keep it idle? Also, do remember, most of these brands have a tendency to depreciate and look old-fashioned.
Why own a second-hand product even? Why spend money and lock it in for that rare occasion of usage? So in will come the third movement of the lending library for luxury brands out here. The clever entrepreneur, who is in reality a luxury brand librarian, will buy inventory and lend on a per-use basis. And that’s the future possibly. If not the present. Remember, this is likely to be an underground movement, and no one must know that it exists. That would be a death-knell for it.
How does the Kangana Ranaut controversy affect Hrithik Roshan’s brand value? Does it affect him badly?
New Delhi
Swati, not at all. In Bollywood, controversy is the middle name of an actor. This controversy is good for both Roshan and Ranaut in terms of brand endorsement deals. This is a soft controversy and not a hard one. It is not about a murder. Instead, it is all about chemistry.
Roshan is a brand’s delight. Whether he is endorsing Rupa Macroman underwear, or whether it is the action format of a Mountain Dew, he is a totally bankable face. In fact, Roshan is a bigger bankable brand endorser than an actor in Hindi cinema. There are some stars you can’t go wrong with when you pick them to endorse brands. Roshan is certainly one of them.
He represents the new and aspirational Indian. The Indian who defies the image of the typical macho male stereotype, but at the same time embodies each one of its attributes in a completely different manner. To an extent, his wiry and totally muscular frame is an antithesis of the male hero of yore. If Dharamendra represented the old, Roshan represents the new.
The controversy he is currently embroiled in keeps him in public light, and adds chemistry to the personas at play as well. That’s how it works here, it seems.
There is a huge duplicity in our lives as consumers. The consumer does not want such controversy and mishaps in is or her personal life, but at the same time, enjoys it in the lives of his stars and brand endorsers. We are a crazy nation of consumers. What we don’t want in our personal lives, we eke out in the lives of our stars. A kind of negative vicarious living. Touché!
Harish Bijoor is a brand strategy expert and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. Send your queries to cat.a.lyst@thehindu.co.in