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Shah Rukh ‘King’ Khan dominated the advertising recall on brand ambassadors on Saturday evening as India outclassed South Africa to bring home the World Cup. While King Kohli dominated play on the field, it was King Khan who ruled the airwaves on brand advertising with Castrol, Everest Spices, Denver and Vimal Pan Masala – though not necessarily in that order.
The Indian Institute of Human Brands (IIHB) ran a telephonic survey on Sunday morning for a Day-After-Recall (DAR) of the World Cup final match, reaching out to 478 respondents across India (M=262, F=216). Respondents were in the 18-40 age group. The IIHB think-tank specialises in the study of celebrities as human brands and publishes a bi-annual TIARA report that rates over 200 celebrities on 64 key attributes.
The most recalled celebrity endorsers from the World Cup Final were Shah Rukh Khan at 82%, followed by Virat Kohli at 61%, Ajay Devgn at 52%, MS Dhoni at 49%, Sachin Tendulkar at 32%, Tiger Shroff at 23%, Alia Bhatt at 19%, Ranveer Singh and Rahul Dravid at 14%, Hrithik Roshan at 13% and Amitabh Bachchan and Rohit Sharma at 12%.
The most recalled ad on the Finals, though, was that of Birla Opus paints, which did not have any celebrity endorser. In fact, the second most recalled brand, Parle, too did not feature any famous endorser. However, Shah Rukh Khan’s Vimal and Everest ads made it to the top five on ad recall.
“Advertising weight does matter. Shah Rukh Khan easily had the highest amount of secondages amongst all celebrity endorsers on the World Cup telecast between the four to five brands that featured him. He dominated the ad breaks and was without doubt the most visible endorser on the finale, ” says Carol Goyal, Executive Director of IIHB, under whose care the survey was conducted.
“The most important takeaway from this research is that King Khan is back – in fact, back with a bang. Till not very far back it was Ranveer Singh and Virat Kohli that dominated the top slots as brand ambassadors. Shah Rukh was not even in the reckoning and most marketers declared him a fading star. But he now seems a hot favourite with brands that have big budgets for a World Cup final,” added Dr Sandeep Goyal, Chief Mentor of IIHB.
IIHB researchers also noticed an interesting halo effect in the study – Virat Kohli’s most visible ad presence was through MRF Tyres, which had a small sprinkling of short-duration spots on the telecast. But his dominating presence on the field during the finals seemed to have upped his ad recall, too.
