Who are Brand ambassadors? What role they play in promoting product? Can we trust them ? These are some of the questions which need to be answered.
The role of the brand ambassador is to transcend all aspects of the brand. One of the most important factor that attracts consumer’s mind is psychological factors such as motivation, perception, learning, believes and attitude. And these are the factors that a brand ambassador influences. Brand having successful association with its Ambassador sometime translates into stronger brand awareness campaign than millions of rupees spent on other marketing efforts such as advertising and promotion.
Consider the case of Salma Hayek selling pampers during her pregnancy
What actually is the power that brand ambassador exerts over the consumers to urge them?
These people have such a strong impact of personalities that people sometime use brand ambassadors as a “tool” for their product, like we seen the case of Junaid Jamshed clarifying Lays issue when it was hit by the accusation of using haram contents in its manufacturing.
More often than not Brand endorsements, especially, come at the expense of an idea. Everyone remembers when Zoozoos and the Pugs walked away with the honors while Airtel was busy spending crores on Sharukh, Madhavan etc. An idea overpowered the blandness of celebrities. Brand ambassadors mean that you are forced to weave your brand around the celebrity than the other way around. This results in lack of believability and consumers fail to associate themselves with the brand. How believable is it when Deepika Padukone says that she uses orbit white? Whereas, Happy Dent had a brilliant idea that needed none to endorse. The crucial ingredient in the success of any brand is its claim to authencity and poor brand ambassadors destroy it.
If the consumer feels that the brand ambassador is the brand itself then there is nothing better than that and that will not be possible until and unless there is exclusivity in your selection. Brands should awaken to the power of zero cost internal marketing assets like their customers, internal as well as external, who can represent their brand. Starbucks is what it is today not because of any ads, in fact they hardly advertise, but due to the service experience that the employees or the Starbucks “partners” help provide. These kinds of brand ambassadors are especially relevant to brands that are service oriented. Even the high end apparel brand Abercrombie and Fitch uses only its sales representatives as its brand ambassadors. Consumers are willing to pay extra for a good service where the employees represent the brand wholeheartedly and hence enhance the brand equity and create a win-win relation. Many product brands are now shrugging of the albatross around their necks of the brand ambassadors and using its consumers or a seemingly normal person as its brand ambassadors. We have seen Dove doing it and Maggi and KurKure do the same with the faces of consumers on its packages.
It is advisable to opt for better ideas more than secondary associations. Incase, companies feel that they need a brand ambassador they should adopt a brand character. If they are still dissatisfied then they should opt for credible, exclusive as well as zero cost marketing assets like consumers and employees to be their brand ambassadors. It will create long term brand equity and better “hard-to-attack” points of differences.
