THE ECONOMIC TIMES
N Shatrujeet
He’s the brand manager’s dream: a vintage brand that appeals to consumers across the board. But the only reason Brand Bachchan is so successful is its brand manager: The Big B himself
In 1992, during the filming of the late Mukul Anand’s Khudah Gawah, Mohammed Najibullah, then president of Afghanistan, offered the film unit half of the nation’s air force as protection in the war-torn country; all that was asked in return was an opportunity to have his pictures taken with the film’s leading man, Amitabh Bachchan.
In an October 2005 national survey of India’s 15-year-olds commissioned by Brand Equity, respondents voted the sixtyplus Amitabh Bachchan as their favourite celebrity brand endorser, ahead of younger national celebrities like Shah Rukh Khan and Sachin Tendulkar. Earlier, in 2003, 23 million MTV viewers voted Bachchan as the Maha Style Icon of the Year.
Today, at the age of 64, Amitabh Bachchan is perhaps one of the busiest actors in the Indian film industry, with eight films in various stages of production — and an estimated Rs 220 crore worth of business riding on his shoulders.
The appeal of Brand Amitabh Bachchan is, in short, every brand manager’s deepest envy — and the thing to aspire for. For, not every brand that’s sold itself successfully to one generation of consumers has the satisfaction of being the next generation’s preferred choice as well. And only the most remarkable of brands have made the kind of comeback that Bachchan has achieved, returning as he did from the brink of virtual oblivion and bankruptcy to dominate the Hindi film industry all over again. Such is the pull of Brand Bachchan that brand marketers keep signing him on as endorser in the hope that his presence would have a positive rub-off on their respective brands. And just two weeks ago the Congress Party urged the Election Commission to ban advertisements which have Bachchan highlighting the achievements of the incumbent Mulayam Singh Yadav government in Uttar Pradesh. The simple message: Brand Bachchan sells.
It isn’t hard to fathom where Brand Bachchan’s appeal lies. In the opinion of Meena Kaushik of Quantum Market Research, Bachchan embodies heritage, dominance, refinement, discernment, charisma, mystique, power and achievement, values that have emerged as a result of his journey from an anti-establishment hero to ruler, patriarch and man of stature. “The appeal of this archetype arises from the belief that man can rise above his circumstance by sheer dint of perseverance and passion for achievement. For the average Indian, he represents resilience of spirit and the power of dreams,” she says. Says Sameer Nair, former CEO of STAR India, during whose tenure at STAR, Bachchan rose, phoenixlike, on the back of game-show, Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC): “Today, Amitabh is a symbol of hope and optimism that life begins at 60.”
B School
Angry Young Brand
The Bachchan brand traces its roots to the politically turbulent 1970s, when Amitabh emerged as Bollywood’s undisputed superstar, riding on the immensely popular Angry Young Man persona. Says Anand Halve of chlorophyll: “The idealism of the 1950s and 1960s started giving way to the harsh realities of life. The worm turned when a generation started feeling it won’t take things lying down, and Amitabh’s Angry Young Man began representing that angst.” Bachchan himself admits that this could have played a part in some of his roles becoming popular. “Writers like Salim saab and Javed saab (Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar) perhaps felt there was a need for someone who would stand up to the system and take on the establishment,” he says.
Yet, it’s not just the roles that worked for Bachchan. In many ways, Amitabh’s personality was the antithesis of everything that audiences had come to expect. “He brought hardness and toughness to the hero, augmented by his voice,” says Santosh Desai of Future Brands. In fact, Bachchan’s trademark voice is one of the most distinguishable aspects of the Bachchan Brand, and is routinely leveraged by mimics and marketers alike. Noted voiceover artist Chetan Shashital, who has dubbed for Bachchan in many radio and TV ads, recalls that back in the late 1980s, Amitabh’s voice was so aspirational for young, upcoming actors that many would only be interested in getting the bass right, rather than focusing on the performance. Says Shashital. “Yes, he has a great voice, but so do many others. But only Amitabh knows how to use it, which is why he’s clicked where others have failed.” Bachchan’s toughness was complemented by a refinement that was missing among other macho actors. “Though Amitabh played the dispossessed or the marginalised, his persona was of someone who was supremely confident. He was always seen as being classy, never down-market, and this worked with the classes and the masses,” says Halve. And if his Angry Young Man portrayals found favour among young male audiences, his versatility in romantic and comic roles endeared him to female and older audiences.
The Fall Of A Legend
However, by the late 1980s and early 1990s, Bachchan was forced to contend with competition from younger, newer rivals. The problem that the Bachchan brand faced was simple: not only was it an ageing brand, it was an ageing human brand — one that wasn’t being reinvented for a new market. In movie after movie, filmmakers tried reprising Amitabh’s Angry Young Man, each recast eroding the Bachchan brand further. And if that wasn’t bad enough, a political career that ended with an implication in the Bofors scandal cast a cloud over the brand. A semi-retirement between 1992-97 didn’t help either. “In his absence, a new generation had grown up on new faces like Shah Rukh, Aamir and Saif. When he came back, the audiences had changed, life had changed, but he was doing the same thing. So the return of Amitabh was that of a fading star looking to reclaim lost glory,” says STAR’s Nair. Incredibly enough, it was during this phase of his career that Bachchan’s profile as a brand endorser actually took off, first with BPL, then Mirinda. However, with the insolvency of the company he founded (ABCL) and sustained flops at the box office, obituaries of Brand Bachchan were being hastily written.
Kaun Banega Superbrand
In 2000, another brand with flagging fortunes, STAR Plus, seeking to overthrow the competition in the TRP game, acquired the rights to Indianise British television gameshow, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? STAR India, in a move to hedge its bets, then chose Amitabh Bachchan to host the Indian adaptation, KBC. Nair maintains that his list of hosts for KBC was a list of one — Bachchan. “When KBC started, the TV was controlled by the lady of the house, not the youth. Now the lady of the house was of an average age of 35. For both husband and wife, Amitabh was the hero they’d grown up watching. So, by default, everyone in the family watched KBC. When we contracted him, we got ‘Vijay’, ‘Anthony’, ‘Babu Moshai’ and ‘Jai’ as a bonus,” he says.
If it worked wonderfully for STAR, it worked miraculously for Brand Bachchan — Amitabh bounced back into the collective consciousness virtually overnight. KBC was closely followed by hits like Mohabbatein, Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham and Baghbaan — Bachchan brand extensions as successful as the mother brand. Doubts, if any, can be laid to rest by looking at the results of Rediffusion DYR’s proprietary international research tool, Brand Asset Valuator (BAV) — in the 2003 wave of BAV, Amitabh Bachchan emerges as an undisputed power brand alongside CNN, Nokia, Honda, Yahoo! and, yes, KBC (See Box: Asset Management). “What KBC achieved was showing people who the ageing Amitabh was and to respect him for that. KBC gave the true Amitabh back to audiences,” says R Balakrishnan (Balki), executive creative director, Lowe, who has just completed his first directorial venture with Bachchan, Chini Kam.
Interestingly, in his second innings, Bachchan has come to represent the establishment that he once rebelled against. Bachchan explains it thus: “The establishment seems to be working, or people feel there isn’t really a need to take on the system. People are willing to accept me in an older role. It is really quite an exciting time because I get to play different roles and not get bogged down by the leading man syndrome which will restrict me as a performer.” Kaushik thinks Brand Bachchan’s reinvention is natural. “He has been able to create an amoebic identity for himself. His ability to stretch himself as a brand derives from his inherent versatility,” she says.
That being the case, add another title to Bachchan’s impressive list of accolades: consummate brand manager. As Nair puts it, “Why didn’t a super brand like ABCL with market experts on board deliver results? Because Brand Bachchan was built and evolved entirely because of Amitabh — not some managers trained at the IIMs. No one can manage the Bachchan brand like he himself does.”
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