Amitabh Bachchan is most recognised Celebrity

Percept Talent Management (PTM) and Hansa Research, which have launched CelebTrack in November last year to track India's most powerful celebrities across movies, sports and television, have announced the initial findings of their work. Over 400 celebrities were ranked on five parameters - popularity, image attributes, power of persuasion, media presence and overexposure. Together, these determined the Celebrity Power Score (CPS). Film stars, cricketers, sports personalities, TV stars and musicians have been included in the exercise.

Manish Porwal, chief executive officer, Percept Talent Management, says, "Being the largest widest and deepest research on celebrities and being a track, it is set to become a currency of evaluating star power. Our endeavour is to provide a professional and yet affordable model, which will allow one to make informed profitable choice."
Ashok Das, managing director, Hansa Research, adds, "We believe that the almost Rs 1,000 crore endorsements market is more than ready to identify its celebrity endorsers through hard facts collected over a huge sample base, rather than on perception of a few or on anecdotal learning."

In phase 1, the research was to shortlist 400 national and regional celebrities from the areas of cricket, television, movies, other sports and music; and was carried out in November 2008. In phase 2, the media presence of the shortlisted celebrities was ascertained and events during the period were taken into account. It was a quantitative primary research, which included a face-to-face interview, and gathered data from over 10,800 respondents (urban, all adults, SEC A,B,C and D and 15-50 years) across India in a period of two waves annually.

Celebrity endorsement has usually depended a lot on gut feel and brands are undertaking extensive research to see if a celebrity is in sync with the brand. For instance, before roping in actor Aamir Khan, Tata Sky had studied all those attributes that the actor stood for and whether they were in sync with the Tata Sky brand, and only then appointing him as the brand ambassador. According to Vikram Mehra, chief marketing officer, Tata Sky, "The most important criteria to rope in a celebrity is whether he stands for the same attributes that the brand stands for. The bigger decision that every marketer has to take right now is to find out more about what the celebrity stands for and it is an evolving thing."

The research shows that celebrities who are popular may not necessarily be liked by the masses. For example, while Amitabh Bachchan is the most recognised celebrity, Akshay Kumar is the most liked one. Similarly, among actresses, Kajol is the second most recognized actress, while Madhuri Dixit is the second most liked celebrity. Amitabh Bachchan leads the market for the masses, while Shah Rukh Khan is more popular with the upper classes. This research also brings out a list of celebrities, whom people don't want to see or read about. The top two names on this list, across India as well as specifically in the HSM, are Rakhi Sawant and Kamal Hassan. On the other hand, people want to read more about Sachin Tendulkar and Dhoni. Finally, when all these parameters are put together, the celebrity with the highest CPS in the male actors' category is Amitabh Bachchan, followed by Akshay Kumar. In the female actors' category, these two positions are held by Aishwarya Rai and Katrina Kaif respectively.

Sachin Tendulkar and M S Dhoni lead the list in the cricketers' category, while Sania Mirza and Vishwanathan Anand are on the first and second spot, respectively, in the other sports category. The findings also differ across geographical markets. Akshay Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan are the top two celebrities across HSM; while in Karnataka, Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid make it to the top two.

A Televisionpoint.com News