Is there undue burden on film stars?

There is a delicious irony in what is happening currently, as far as moral debates in and about Bollywood go. Tune in only if your ears will bear with that shrill voice from the pulpit, the sound of Miz-know-it-all Kangana Ranaut, who is pontificating on what constitutes good behaviour.

"Integrity is not good just for your conscience anymore. Yeh naya Bharat hai, sudhar jao nahi toh sudhar diye jaoge (This is the new Bharat, improve or you will be forced to improve)," she pontificates on her Instagram story, along with a screenshot of an article about the latest celebs under the ED scanner. Her insouciance is probably fired by the fact that currently she’s pretty much a pariah as far as most of the Bollywood world is concerned.

The irony is made starker because you cannot miss the fact that in speaking of the new Bharat, she is unwittingly, or perhaps quite deliberately, endorsing the current government. Their slogans infuse her enthusiasm, and their actions are her impetus. Ranaut obliviously misses the irony that endorsements can’t merit scrutiny only when they are about business and must evade scrutiny when they revel in political leanings.

In my three decades of image management, I’ve been a keen student of the levers of marketing and determining what moves the needle as far as brand love goes. Image management data only hints that in India film stars do matter quite a bit. On the parameters that brands work with, the tendency to use film star endorsements is working off some flimsy evidence. But like the legendary David Ogilvy’s dilemma, I’m not quite ready to testify that film actors matter in all businesses. Certainly, I’d balk at their hefty endorsement fees, without much better data. 

This is a uniquely Indian dilemma. Note that globally only around 20 per cent of all advertisements use celebrities of any kind. Unlike elsewhere, in Indian advertising, film actors contribute to 80 per cent of all celebrity endorsements. That has no parallels anywhere else. No, even our poor popular cult figure cricketers don’t come anywhere close.

If we confine ourselves to the world of business, there is cause for concern. There is no doubt that Bollywood has sat on and hatched quite a few bad eggs in its time. From television sets that did not arrive when ordered despite being sold on e-commerce sites that may have had Big Bachchan on their ads to crypto schemes that unsurprisingly turned out to be ponzi schemes but were endorsed by Govinda, to the current anxiety over the betting sites that have had a massive lineup of stars endorsing them — the cases have been a mix of the trivial and substantial. 

Things have gotten substantially worse since 2014 when it was decreed that actors could be held liable for damages to consumers if they endorsed products that they knew could be damaging. That crucial epistemological gap, of guilt being based on whether they knew, continues to keep courts busy with a series of allegations about what constitutes an endorsement, an outright fraud, and what was an error of judgment or convenient ignorance.

For most stars today the dilemma is twofold. In most cases, they have no means of establishing the provenance of what they are endorsing, but on the other hand, they have the relentless pressure of knowing that they have brief careers during which they need to maximise their income. Others are waiting to jump into their shoes if they wait for too long. These pressures very often require them to cut corners, and it’s precisely when rounding those blind ones that they come face-to-face with the heavy arm of the law. 

Lawmakers and the agencies have still not grappled with the fact that the jury is still out as to whether the endorsement of film stars even matters as much as we insist they do. There’s also the bigger issue that they need to distil — as to whether those making the endorsements have any way of checking the validity of the products or services that they are touting.

In the fluid world of morals that we’re all traversing, are we placing an undue burden on those who are merely celebrities? The State needs to be in the driver’s seat while deciding these ethical conundrums; stars certainly aren’t equipped to be.

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

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.