Why do celebrities endorse products they may never use personally?

In a country where people literally worships celebrities, it makes it imperative for stars to lead their lives by setting good examples. As the often quoted phrase goes ‘With great power comes great responsibilities’, our celebrities too posses powers that they consciously or unconsciously gain, thanks to their star status.

Their fans and followers track every move of the stars and blindly follow whatever they do, either on-screen or off-screen. Fans try to imitate their favourite actors to the extent that they even start walking and talking like them. All these things must be making our stars feel so loved and flattered but they seldom realise how important every move of theirs or spoken word is for their followers.

Looking at the kind of adulation these stars enjoy, brands and product owners make a queue outside the actor’s house in a bid to sign the most popular actor and make him/her endorse their products. The lure of earning big bucks make our stars sign these endorsement deals, thereby increase their market value. It is a win-win situation for both, the brand owners as well as the stars, but we wonder if they ever realise how sometimes all these things affect their fans and followers.

Just a few years back an FIR was filed against the brand ambassadors of Maggi noodles, which included megastar Amitabh Bachchan, and actress Madhuri Dixit and Preity Zinta, since high levels of lead were found in Maggi noodles. Later these stars, especially Amitabh Bachchan vowed to be more careful in future while signing up such endorsement deals.

Being a mother doesn’t mean you stop being yourself right? I took the #Olay #SkinTransformation #28Daychallenge Here’s my #Reborn story.. what’s yours? @olayindia

A post shared by Mira Rajput Kapoor (@mira.kapoor) on Aug 6, 2018 at 12:11pm PDT

Yesterday, actor Shahid Kapoor’s wife, Mira Rajput shared her debut commercial (of a skincare product) on social media. Now, apart from praising Mira for her making her acting debut, people also trolled her mercilessly for featuring in that advertisement. For the uninitiated, Mira is just 23-years-old so obviously, people were enraged over the fact that how can a youngster endorse an anti-ageing cream? And this totally makes sense.

Now, this was the point that really made us ponder about why do our stars endorse things they themselves may never use personally? Also, how can they be so irresponsible when it comes to selecting which products to endorse? Don’t they have any inkling about the kind of impact these ads have on the society? Also, is making money the only agenda our stars have?

[caption id="attachment_746064" align="alignnone" width="600"] Image source: A screengrab from commercial[/caption]

Fairness creams, anti-ageing creams, energy drinks, sugary cold-drinks, pan masala products, alcohol, health supplements…well the list of such unhealthy and harmful products endorsed by our actors is endless. And many a time these stars have even been served notice for endorsing such products, but still many of them continue to do so by appearing in the surrogate advertisements of these products.

We hope common sense prevail upon these celebrities and they think twice before giving in to the temptation of making quick bucks. They should understand the power of their influence and use it for their as well as the betterment of the society.

Also Read: Instead of remaking films, why can’t Bollywood filmmakers adapt more novels?

Pooja Sharma

Cinephile. Bibliophile. Pluviophile. Selenophile. Autophile. Aesthete. Blood group- Tea positive. Poetry lover. Sucker of rom-coms.

PS: Sharmaji ki Ladki sucks at writing bios.
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