Bollywood’s most popular stars, including top endorsers such as Ranveer Singh and Akshay Kumar, are seeing their advertising rates cool down by 10-20% amid Hindi films’ dry run at the box office this year, save for a film here or there.
Even top stars like Singh and Kumar, who command the highest advertising fees among Bollywood actors with a whopping brand value of $158.3 million and $139.6 million, respectively in 2021, are starved for superhits since the pandemic.
“There is a fall in rates of 10-20% of the top stars across Bollywood. So, they try and cover it up by doing far more ads across categories than they used to and giving more time to these things. The overall efficiency for a day (for filming ads) has also gone up,” says Manish Porwal, MD, Alchemist Marketing & Talent Solutions.
Although overall brand value is going down, Bollywood stars are making equivalent money as before, he adds.
Singh and Kumar hold the second and third spots, respectively, after ace cricketer Virat Kohli in Duff & Phelps’ Celebrity Brand Valuation Study 2021, which provides a ranking of India’s most powerful celebrity brands based on brand values derived from their brand endorsement portfolios and relative social media presence. Eight out of the top 10 names on the list were from Bollywood, accounting for more than $620 million in brand endorsement value.
Singh, who endorses 41 brands such as Ching’s, Bingo, Nivea and Colgate, reportedly charges between Rs 3.4 crore and Rs 4 crore per ad. Akshay Kumar, who is known to charge over Rs 2 to 3 crore per day for an ad shoot, endorses at least 30 brands such as Honda, Nirma, Policy Bazaar, Livguard Energy, Harpic, Suthol, Dollar, Tata Motors, PC Jewelers, Revital H, Lever Ayush, and Cardekho among others.
Experts say the rates vary drastically even for the same actor based on the brand, the category and their value-add for the brand.
Besides, brands have also become smarter and more practical about approaching stars. “Earlier, it used to be ‘I want Amitabh Bachchan for this’. Now it’s about ‘Whom can I take for this?’, says Porwal.
The OTT platforms have made stars out of actors such as Pankaj Tripathi, diffusing the hegemony of star power all the more, he adds.
Naresh Gupta, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of creative agency Bang In The Middle, says that he is seeing new endorsement deals tumble and brands negotiating harder. “The endorsement market is in a bit of turmoil right now, maybe that is why we are seeing too many paan masala ads being endorsed by stars. Even the A-Listers are doing Instagram posts and willing to work as influencers. Producer and Director Karan Johar is the biggest example,” he says.
Singh, whose last big hit was 2019’s Gully Boy, has had a lackluster run since the pandemic with flops like ’83 and Jayeshbhai Jordaar. Kumar has had eight flops since Laxmii in 2020 with Bell Bottom, Atrangi Re, Bachchan Pandey, Samrat Prithviraj, Raksha Bandhan, Cuttputlli and Ram Setu. His only hit during this period has been Sooryavanshi (Nov 5, 2021), which also had Singh in a special appearance.
The film was made on a production budget of about Rs 160 crore and earned a net lifetime collection of Rs 196 crore in India and Rs 295 crore gross worldwide collections, according to Bollywood Hungama.
The Hindi film industry itself has had a poor showing this year, accounting for 33% of the Rs 9,024 crore cumulative box office collection in India during January-October 2022, according to Ormax Media’s ‘The India Box Office Report’. More than a third of that 33% sum came from Hindi-dubbed versions of Telugu, Tamil & Kannada language films, the report said.
Films such as RRR, KGF: Chapter 2, Pushpa, and most recently Kantara in the southern languages have been giving Hindi films a run for their money. The highest-grossing Hindi films in the domestic box office so far this year have been Brahmastra (Rs 306 crore), The Kashmir Files (Rs 292 crore), and Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 (Rs 219 crore), according to the Ormax report.
