One of the tabloid carried a news of Shah Rukh Khan giving a gift worth 30 crores to Farrah Khan. The gift, according to Farrah, was her new film Om Shanti Om and dates of Shah Rukh Khan for the whole movie. I don't know how it amount to 30 crores but it did. I guess it was Farrah Khan's birthday and SRK gave her a watch as well “He gave me Tag Heuer mother of something something watch” The news also mentioned that SRK gave her a Santro on the release of Main Hoon Naa.
The two gifts he gave made me think. “Smart hain, Santro wale hain” is what SRK says in the ad of Santro which he has been advertising for quite some time now. He is also the brand ambassador of Tag Heuer. The paper doesn't say that he gave her a car and a watch, it said a Santro and a Tag Heuer. Another thing I seriously doubt is if SRK actually paid for the gifts he gave here. It is certian that the companies would have given him the stuff to gave away for the free publicity the companies got by it.
I guess that is what being a brand ambassador means, you keep promoting the stuff all the time. I guess if someone asks what time it is, SRK would say “B B B Barah baj kar 15 minute, this time is brought to you by Tag Heuer mother-of-pearl watch, water resistant till 100 meters with 11 Pure Top Wesselton diamond indexes.”
Hey Sharukh! See this is the watch I wear, why don't you give me a watch too. If not a mother of pearl, I won't mind a daughter or even a grand daughter of pearl will do.
He couldn't gift someone a box of Chyawanprash otherwise he would have done that do. “Movie hit nahion hui? Sona chandi khata to ho jati”
How deeply imbibed advertising is in our lives can be understood by that. Not just the above mentioned incident, there are even more ways we see advertising but fail to see it as advertising. One is when we confuse advertising with editorial content in News Papers. The newspaper must have also got some money from the companies to mention the two brand names and it doesn't stop at just at that. The front page news in the same paper was how SRK has made a studio in his home to rehearse for Kaun Banega Crorepati. He is supposedly rehearsing 4 to 5 hours everyday and the very next day he was in Dubai. Has he done all the rehearsals he needed? I guess not. The whole thing was just to advertise the show and Star Plus must have given a hefty amount to the paper to carry the news.
This is not limited to only Tabloids, the major English Dailies also do this. In the magazine suppliments of the papers you can see some image which was taken at the launch of some brand or the opening of a store. It is thinly disguised as a news about a celebrity but in reality is promoting a brand like what I saw a few days ago. There was a picture of Sanjeev Kapoor and some news about him but in reality it was an ad for the low calories sweetner he is promoting.
Even in movies you can see advertisements. I was watching iRobot a few days ago and the first two minutes of the movie advertised a car, a courier company and a brand of shoes.
But hey, who am I to say anything about it. I myself am showing ads on this very page but atleast I am not trying it pass it off as editorial content.
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