Dhoni- Major brand ambassador at MANAGE

M.S. Dhoni,the captain of team India is the darling of adlands these days. And surely at MANAGE too. He is virtually endorsing every brand most of them are home production of MANAGE, be it a fruit drink or anything else. It has brought to me a conclusion that he is the universal choice for all marketers and they should leverage his charismatic personality for brand endorsements.
Today while watching T-20 match b/w India and Sri lanka ( which India lost miserably), few of prospective ad-makers in future, were contemplating (more spoofing) that every ad can take MSD as its brand ambassador. That time we had manufactured some topics for even GD( courtesy:few of my colleagues).Though on serious note, can him be a brand ambassador for every brand???
Firstly I would like to analyse present status of him being used as BA. Brand Dhoni is now worth Rs 300 Crore. Dhoni Charges about Rs 5 crore and at present he is promoting about 19 brands and all the contracts are for 3 years. Even some of the contracts are more then 3 years like Pepsi and Reebok he has a 10 year contract.These days he is not accepting likely every brand promotion but wisely associating with the brands. Big brands are in his list and associating with big brands only. He is second to Shahrukh Khan in Brand Promotion if he continues to perform like this and India being No.1 in cricket then that day is not also far when he will be No.1 in brand promotion also.This says much about his status. But is it good enough alone to take MSD as the BA.
I personally believe that brands have benefits and irrespective of BA's celebrity status, the attributes of brand must match with those of BA. It is necessary to understand whether the benefits of brand and benefits of BA are synergistic, do they gel together, will they stimulate the buyers to buy the brand? Another issue is that whether BA is more powerful( I mean does his brand equity more than the that of brand?)or less powerful( not able to be recalled).Creating awareness about brand is one thing and translating this awareness in purchase and repeat purchase is another aspect.As far as overpowering is concerned we have lots of example. one of that is of our lovable zoo-zoos( Vodafone) and that of Sachin Tendulkar overpowering MRF. Another issue is that does each brand require a BA?. Will a B2B product require BA?. Generally brands that belong to aspirational life-style do perform better with a BA than other product categories.Another issue is of who are your target customer? Essentially life-style products cater to premium segment of customers. In other cases where responsibility of BA is to raise the level of product usage is one where BA are effective.
In the background of this can MSD be a universal brand endorser??. I have my doubts. In few cases where product itself does not command any premium like in case of Cello pens where MSD is being used make little sense. Another great example comes of Mysore Sandal soap which tried to reemerge from moribund state using MSD as brand ambassador failed miserably later on.The reason being it had GI status so people wanted to see someone from Karnataka state(he would have automatic GI of Karnataka).So choosing a BA is complex as associating him/her to audience.Here I would like to say though MSD has youth appeal, iconic personality but his association with each brand is not justified.But marketers often in haste to capture attention forget that not every sword fits into any scabbard.
So hopefully this time too I have said straight from my heart and those who are following this blog will understand what I mean.