Shweta Tiwari Big Star Of Small Screen

If you thought you were seeing a bit too much of your favourite celebrity on TV, you are right. Celebrity usage in TV advertisements, say data, simply took off last year.

A research report by Adex India brought out by TAM, says that there has been a 49% growth in celebrity endorsement ad volumes during 2007 compared with 2006. And since 2003, a celebrity endorsement volume on TV has exploded more than six times. Not much of a surprise, says brand consultant Harish Bijoor. "Celebrity endorsements seem to be dramatically helping raise brand recall in India. There is an instant brand culture now, which is contributing to this. Earlier people had a lot of time for brands to establish themselves. That is not the case now."

When it comes to endorsements, Bollywood faces leave cricketers far behind, dominating 81% of the overall share of the endorsement ad pie.

Of this, male actors dominated half of the advertisement volumes, while female actors made up 31%.

Yes, Shah Rukh Khan is the most popular among all celebrities with the maximum number of endorsements. But what is not known is that serials actor Shweta Tiwari has the maximum number of brands riding on her appeal after Shah Rukh and Amitabh Bachchan.

TV celebrities formed 5% of the entire celebrity endorsement volume. Sports, primarily cricket, split films and TV celebs with a 14% share.

When it comes to categories of usage, with so many different brands all trying to outslug each other; it was the aerated soft drinks category that saw the most number of celebrities battling it out.

It had a 7% share of the total celebrity secondages and was closely followed at 5% by cellular phone services and toilet soaps, and at 4% by biscuits. Ultimately what matters is if these brands can convert all the celebrity-aided brand recall into hard cash from the consumer's wallet. And that is where they could fall short.

Harish Bijoor says, "While celebrities aid brand recall, they are not too efficient when it comes to converting this into actually influencing buying behaviour."