The other day, I was watching a TV commercial where one of my favorite actresses was heaping praises on a soap brand. Held in rapt attention, the words uttered by her instantly hit my unconscious realm of the mind that plays significant role in making the choices we opt for. Now imagine, if someone who has a decent education and knows the gambits brands resort to for selling their products falls prey to such promotional gimmick, what happens to those naïve people living in the countryside who are unaware of the ways of the marketing world?

It goes without saying that celebrities are one of the most adored sections of the society. People follow them and love them unconditionally. In fact, the adulation and love they receive from mass people is the pull factor that catapult them into stardom. But, what about their moral rectitude? Don’t they have any moral obligation towards their fans for the love and appreciation they receive from them?

Of late, celebrity endorsement for different brands and business entities has turned into a cause célèbre, especially after the Evaly fiasco. Endorsement by celebrities is a very common but the-most-efficacious marketing strategy employed all over the world. Brands pay a hefty amount of money to the celebrities for endorsing their products/services. Consequently, they endorse anything they are being offered money for. But, the question is – can the celebrities duck out of their social responsibility or abnegate the ethical duty they have towards their fans who (at least those from rural backwater) count on whatever they say blindly?

Let me explain — brands rope in celebrities including renowned actors, actress, sportsmen and even artists because they want to capitalize on the affective feelings of mass people. This is called experience economy, a term coined by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore who are authors with international repute and have contributed significantly to popularizing this new concept of economy.

This notion is largely driven by consumeristic frenzy. Brands or marketing mavens orchestrate events/narratives (through advertisements) for their target consumers/customers so that they feel tempted to experience the same transformation that the product/service can offer. This is about some kind of psychic gratification, which influences a viewer unconsciously to strive for some kind of amelioration in life by using a particular product or availing of a certain service.

This is what the brands cash in on. As people are crazy about celebrities, they want to emulate their lifestyle. Such a social tendency often takes them to a stage when they also cherish a desire to wallow in the same luxury as the celebrities do.

Moreover, celebrity endorsement is often a trick to align the personality of the celebrity with the image of the brand and establish a co-relation and association between the celebrity’s glamour, beauty and fame, and the brand’s product or service. It has a knock-on consequence. Owing to such association, whenever a celebrity spares a few tropes in favor of a product/service, his/her fans go gaga over it, loosen the purse strings and consequently, jump on the buying bandwagon.

The problem with such endorsement is celebrities really don’t know about the real quality of the products or the authenticity of the service they are touting. Simply put, they are doing it for making a buck. When you are luring people into buying a thing without even knowing about the details and its quality, you are actually pulling wool over people’s eyes. For celebrities it is much more relevant, because it is actually their face value that is being sold in the form of a product/service.

There are two solutions to this problem. First, the celebrities should stop endorsing products/services indiscriminately, which is actually a pious hope.Last but not least, we have to be wary of their words and avoid being reeled in by the celebrity talks. Cross-sections of people need to get it in their heads that celebrities are no saints and they are not telling the truth always.

(The writer is a columnist.)