Celebs, especially cricketers and filmstars, are followed like religion. It is no surprise, therefore, that they are often the first choice of any corporate group that can afford them for product or service endorsement. Hence, you see Dhoni, Sachin, Dravid, Yuvraj, Kareena, Amitabh, Abhishek, Hrithik, Ranbir, Deepika or Shah Rukh, among scores of other celebs, lending their face or name to almost any product or service available in the country.
And since only the biggies can afford their services, the big marketing and advertising budgets also ensure these faces are all-pervasive and stare down at you from any TV channel or print publication in the country, often translated into different languages to cater to different regions.
Do these stars possess the sensitivity that they should exhibit when they endorse a product? Over a decade ago, Sachin and Hrithik endorsed an internet company that actually turned out to be a fraud. There was a bit of debate on the issue and whether the stars should not be careful when they lend their names to dodgy stuff. To be fair to Sachin and Hrithik, however, when they endorsed this company, the entire nation, perhaps the world, was in the midst of an internet boom and they had no way of knowing if this was a fraud or not.
However, the same cannot be said of a recent TV commercial involving Shah Rukh Khan, in which he is promoting a new version of Hyundai's i10. In the commercial, which can be seen on almost every channel these days, the frequency rising with the festival season, Shah Rukh takes a left exit, stops dead in the middle, debates whether to go to Mumbai, the lane in which he is standing, or to Goa. After deliberating briefly, the superstar nonchalantly reverses in the wrong lane and gets on to the road leading to Goa. He made it look so cool and easy, and of course, the done and macho thing.
Dear Shah Rukh, you know you are a role model for millions. I may not necessarily think you are a great actor, even in commercial cinema, but you are a great entertainer for the masses and that is a huge achievement. Thanks to that, you also have an enormous grip over your fans. So, your hairstyle to dressing habits to the way you speak to the way you walk to the way you drive, is all emulated. It is extremely important, therefore, that you do things right.
India, as you know, has among the deadliest roads in the world in terms of fatalities. While I would have expected even the multinational auto manufacturer and the advertising agency to be sensitive to this, the onus on you, for obvious reasons, is even bigger. To say that I was surprised would be an understatement. More than that I was disappointed, for I have heard you utter "politically correct" sentiments so very often that to see you do something wrong in an advertisement was a shock.
The least you can do now is to speak to the car manufacturer and ask them to amend the commercial appropriately. It would be great to see you driving that car and endorsing its drivability, but all done the right way, so that millions of your fans too can follow you, the right way. It would be sad if someone were to stop dead in the middle of the road and reverse in busy traffic and get hurt, or heaven forbid, even fatally, just because he saw his hero do so.
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