MUMBAI: Star power, they say, sells anything these days.
In a country that has been obsessed with fair skin, selling fairness creams to women has not been a tough task so far. But are Indian men too obsessed with fair skin. Well it would seem so, which is why in 2005 Emami launched Fair and Handsome – a fairness cream for men.
Two years down the line, however, the brand is now looking at capturing a larger market share. Not surprisingly, the company has zeroed in on superstar Shah Rukh Khan to endorse the brand.
With the new campaign for the brand, Emami group director Mohan Goenka expects the annual revenues of Fair and Handsome to touch the Rs 550 – 600 million (Rs 55 – 60 crore) mark, which is 40 per cent higher than last year’s achieved target. Barring Khan’s fees the production budget of the ad is estimated at Rs 5.5 million (Rs 55 lakhs).
The new television commercial (TVC), starring Khan, has been directed by filmmaker Shirish Kunder (Jaan-E-Mann), who incidentally makes his debut as a commercial ad filmmaker with this ad. As was first reported by Businessofcinema.com, Kunder is also planning a movie with SRK, which the latter’s production house Red Chillies will produce.
Sharing his experience, Kunder says, “While studying engineering, I read everything from Drucker to Porter preparing for my MBA. But then I joined films and that never happend. Directing commercials today, in some way, allows me to use that knowledge, and indulge in my interests. And directing Shah Rukh in my very first film as an ad filmmaker was a wonderful way to kick it off.”
The commercial is a song-dance jingle based sequence. The music for this has been composed by Vishal and Shekhar, whereas Shaan has rendered the song for Khan and Firoz Khan has choreographed it.
While Khan is currently on a holiday in London, he wrapped up a sizable amount of work on feature films and ad films. Following the ad for Sunfeast’s Snacky, Khan also shot for Fair and Handsome. The latter will be seen on air by the first week of July.
No Bollywood actor has endorsed a fairness cream so far. This, however, is Khan’s second experience at promoting a beauty product. He created ripples in the industry when he became the first actor to ever feature in a Lux commercial.
What’s more, it took almost 10 months to convince Khan to endorse the fairness cream. “It was quite a task to get SRK to endorse this product. We had to meet him nearly seven-eight times before we drafted the final creative. SRK basically did not want to offend any section of the society like other fairness creams have done in the past,” informs Goenka.
“We needed SRK for this campaign to reach out to the male population and let them know that they should be using a male fairness cream and not a female product,” he added.
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