“TAG Heuer congratulates its beautiful rebel – MC Mary Kom into the Semi Finals of the 2012 London Olympics.
The glamorous TAG Heuer Woman shares Mary’s restless and rebellious nature. Like her, she excels at her game, knows how to win, and how to celebrate. Creative, confident, always plugged in, she never stops building on her achievements and pushing herself to be better, but she also knows how to relax and have fun.”
Says the TAG Heuer brand page on Facebook.
This is Mary Kom, who now needs no introduction. Do click on the link to see Ms Kom looking beautiful and resplendent indeed.
Did you do a double take on seeing that photo? If so, join the very large club. To feature as a TAG Heuer ambassador, Mary Kom has to be airbrushed to look like someone she is not. Yes, being adorned and looking gorgeous is a woman’s right and privilege. But when that adornment makes Ms Kom’s appearance and not her performance or character the centre piece, one has to wonder about the O word in brand marketing. Objectification.
Objectification is central to “celebrity endorsement” in brand marketing. Picking a person to represent a brand’s abstract, often fuzzy, promise is the purest form of objectification. It also happens to be, in my view, the epitome of laziness and paucity of creativity in brand marketing. That is how TAG Heuer, that uses film actor Shahrukh Khan as a brand ambassador in India, now thinks Mary Kom is a fit for their brand. Yes, it is ok to take a few moments to get one’s head around what Shahrukh Khan has in common with Mary Kom.
Nor is the post-Olympics upsurge in luxury brands rushing to sign up medal winners – particularly in emerging markets – a compliment to brand managers.
In a mature market, brands sponsor and support promising athletes. When a sponsored athlete succeeds, the brand can stake a legitimate claim to associating with that success. In the UK for instance,
RBS has sponsored Andy Murray since he was 13, when he was a relative unknown playing junior level. Like athletes, brand building isn’t an overnight success of TAGging along to someone else’s, but actually investing in it. But is that what is happening in the emerging markets (emphasis on
markets)?
Mary Kom wasn’t entirely an unknown before the Olympics. Even if women’s boxing isn’t your thing, heck, the Intelligent Magazine did a superb piece on her stardom before the Olympics. Did the five-times World Champion Mery Kom not strike TAG as a woman who “excels at her game, knows how to win“? Or was her life story not an example of her “pushing herself to be better“? Her close shave with poverty can’t have been much about how to “have fun” but TAG could have eased all that by promising her support before she became famous. Instead of sponsoring her when she needed help, the brand now wants to ride on the coattails of her success.
Of course, emerging markets are less about brand building and all about reaping the rewards from the “markets” overnight. Aren’t they? Investment? What investment?
