Apple to make Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan an Indian brand ambassador - report

AppleInsider

Apple will be making Bollywood film star Shah Rukh Khan a brand ambassador for India, intensifying the company's profile in the country, according to a Thursday report.

An announcement will be made when Apple launches new iPhones in India later this year, said local website PC Tablet, citing anonymous sources. That could be a month or more after Apple's normal U.S. launch window in September, if patterns from last year repeat. The iPhone 6s only arrived in India in October.

The company has a number of such "ambassadors" elsewhere, such as Brazilian-born soccer player Neymar, or NBA player Steph Curry in the U.S. These people are used to market Apple products, attracting attention through their celebrity.

During his trip to India last month, Apple CEO Tim Cook attended a dinner party hosted by Khan, where other Bollywood celebrities were also in attendance. It's unknown whether Cook made the trip with appointing Khan in mind, or if the idea of using him may have sprung out of the party.

Apple has declared India a focal point of future expansion as the pace of growth has slowed in China. Cook has argued that the arrival of new LTE networks in the country could propel iPhone sales beyond a small 2 percent marketshare, but the main obstacle is believed to be price, since even the iPhone SE costs several times as much as most phones sold in the country.

rogifan_new

Steph Curry is a "brand ambassador" for Apple? Since when?

gatorguy

rogifan_new said:

Steph Curry is a "brand ambassador" for Apple? Since when?

I think it was just an ad or two, but perhaps that's what is meant by a "brand ambassador" in this story? If so then the new guy is doing some Indian TV ads for Apple? 

latifbp

Shah Rukh Khan is a mega-star in India. If Apple did not go into this with him as a whatever in mind then they didn't know what they were doing. But, I figure Apple, as usual, knew exactly what it was doing.

Soli

"Hello, I'm a Mac."
"And I'm an Untouchable."

appleempl

I like SRK, When I used to contract for Apple as a SW tester I used to travel to Nepal and India in between contracts and I lucked out to see Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge when it came out in 1995 while in Udaipur. Ever since then I've watched Bollywood movies and have enjoyed his acting. I think he will be a fine person for Apple, they couldn't have chose a more beloved Indian actor and public figure. Bravo Apple!

maestro64

Using a Brand Ambassador in a country which is not really brand loyal does not make a whole lot of sense. Most Indians by on price and what they can get for free. They are where the US was back in the 70's to 90's. Plus this whole Brand Ambassador is so 90's. Ask Samsung and Motorola how well it work for them getting big time Stars to be their brand ambassadors.

NY1822

rogifan_new said:

Steph Curry is a "brand ambassador" for Apple? Since when?

http://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/15/10/26/apples-new-iphone-6s-ad-features-nba-star-steph-curry-focuses-on-live-photos

the.bear

So the Shah Rukh Khan's advertising campaign versus ... Sundar Pichai and his effort to train 2 million Android programmers in India by 2018. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Google-to-train-two-million-Android-developers-Sundar-Pichai/articleshow/50219545.cms It will be curious 5 years from now to see to what extent each approach yields fruit for its respective platforms. Google's previous India strategy, Android One, was a massive failure but that was not a Pichai project.

antonpablo

If Apple would just come out with new design and innovative stuff instead of the same tired stuff the past couple years, they wouldn't need to resort to paying celebrities for endorsements. 

NemWan

antonpablo said:

If Apple would just come out with new design and innovative stuff instead of the same tired stuff the past couple years, they wouldn't need to resort to paying celebrities for endorsements. 

When they do something innovative they'll also get a celebrity. Original iMac + Jeff Goldblum.

jakeb

Tim isn't going to pick someone on a whim. I'm sure they had full research dossiers on all the possible celebrity endorsers and if anything the party was a final "interview" of sorts. 

JoP

Shah Rukh Khan has 19.7 million followers on Twitter, 19.1 million likes on his Facebook page, and 2 million followers on Instagram. He's also the 2nd wealthiest actor in the world and the 7th-highest paid actor, according to Forbes. He's a brand in himself, so I'd say he's the a big enough celebrity to sell Apple's brand to the world. The fact that he owns his own special effects company and is a real tech nerd is icing on the cake. Perfect pairing.

rogifan_new

NY1822 said:

rogifan_new said:

Steph Curry is a "brand ambassador" for Apple? Since when?

http://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/15/10/26/apples-new-iphone-6s-ad-features-nba-star-steph-curry-focuses-on-live-photos

Ok I'm sorry but being in an iPhone commercial does not equate to being a brand embassador imo. When I think of Brand Embassador I think of someone exclusively paid by a company to support that company's products. Apple has lots of different celebrities in their commercials. Are we going to start calling Cookie Monster a brand embassador too?

the.bear

maestro64 said:

Ask Samsung and Motorola how well it work for them getting big time Stars to be their brand ambassadors.

To be fair, Samsung's billions in annual profit selling Android devices - when the other Android OEMs make hundreds of millions to $1 billion in a good year and break even in a bad one - is due primarily to their massive marketing campaigns. Other companies produce good hardware, and yes other companies have copied Apple. Samsung is the only one who managed to pull it off, and do so in North America and western Europe selling tens of millions of Galaxy S and Galaxy Note devices that cost $800. Perhaps if LG had hired LeBron James instead of Joseph Gordon-Levitt (?) or gotten their hooks into Steph Curry before he became the face of the NBA and snapped up by Apple they would be doing better. HTC for their part did hire Robert Downey Jr. (and Jason Statham who is huge in Europe and Asia) but did not have enough money to actually use them in TV ads that anybody actually saw.

Shah Rukh Khan will probably help Apple make inroads with Indian populace that can afford their products today, which would help Apple become an aspirational brand for people who will join India's middle and upper classes tomorrow. That is probably Apple's real problem in India: it is not an aspirational brand there the way that it is in China and Japan (and South Korea). That is why none of the Android device makers have made creating lookalike iPhones a strategy point the way that manufacturers have for the Chinese and Japanese markets. That is consistent with how you build an image and a brand.

Although it may have been totally by accident, Samsung's going with LeBron - and remember they were also a partner with Beats - worked like spades for them too. I guess you can say that where Apple had the "suburban" constituency for the iPhone, Samsung was able to get the "urban" one. Their campaign painted iPhone owners as brand-conscious and elitist and not concerned with more practical stuff like multi-tasking, battery life, screen size and the latest tech.  Then again, it probably wasn't accidental at all. I just remembered: Samsung America came up with that marketing strategy. The headquarters in Korea got all nationalist and forced them out with bogus fraud type investigations because they couldn't handle the Yanks outdoing them in their own company. After that Samsung started managing the North American marketing efforts from Korea, and sales for the Galaxy S5 and S6 cratered. They had to do a total corporate reshuffling with younger, more western-influenced executives taking over the company for the S7 to rebound.

So if this actor is able to do for Apple in India what Michael Jordan did for Nike, then 5 years from now this will be the move that everyone saw as a stroke of pure genius.

ireland

antonpablo said:

If Apple would just come out with new design and innovative stuff instead of the same tired stuff the past couple years, they wouldn't need to resort to paying celebrities for endorsements. 

Wait 11 days.

cnocbui

I have a suspicion that the Indian government had a bit more in mind than employing one person part-time, who hardly needs the work, as a condition for allowing them to dump used iPhones on the Indian market.

maestro64

the.bear said:

maestro64 said:

Ask Samsung and Motorola how well it work for them getting big time Stars to be their brand ambassadors.

To be fair, Samsung's billions in annual profit selling Android devices - when the other Android OEMs make hundreds of millions to $1 billion in a good year and break even in a bad one - is due primarily to their massive marketing campaigns. Other companies produce good hardware, and yes other companies have copied Apple. Samsung is the only one who managed to pull it off, and do so in North America and western Europe selling tens of millions of Galaxy S and Galaxy Note devices that cost $800. Perhaps if LG had hired LeBron James instead of Joseph Gordon-Levitt (?) or gotten their hooks into Steph Curry before he became the face of the NBA and snapped up by Apple they would be doing better. HTC for their part did hire Robert Downey Jr. (and Jason Statham who is huge in Europe and Asia) but did not have enough money to actually use them in TV ads that anybody actually saw.

Shah Rukh Khan will probably help Apple make inroads with Indian populace that can afford their products today, which would help Apple become an aspirational brand for people who will join India's middle and upper classes tomorrow. That is probably Apple's real problem in India: it is not an aspirational brand there the way that it is in China and Japan (and South Korea). That is why none of the Android device makers have made creating lookalike iPhones a strategy point the way that manufacturers have for the Chinese and Japanese markets. That is consistent with how you build an image and a brand.

Although it may have been totally by accident, Samsung's going with LeBron - and remember they were also a partner with Beats - worked like spades for them too. I guess you can say that where Apple had the "suburban" constituency for the iPhone, Samsung was able to get the "urban" one. Their campaign painted iPhone owners as brand-conscious and elitist and not concerned with more practical stuff like multi-tasking, battery life, screen size and the latest tech.  Then again, it probably wasn't accidental at all. I just remembered: Samsung America came up with that marketing strategy. The headquarters in Korea got all nationalist and forced them out with bogus fraud type investigations because they couldn't handle the Yanks outdoing them in their own company. After that Samsung started managing the North American marketing efforts from Korea, and sales for the Galaxy S5 and S6 cratered. They had to do a total corporate reshuffling with younger, more western-influenced executives taking over the company for the S7 to rebound.

So if this actor is able to do for Apple in India what Michael Jordan did for Nike, then 5 years from now this will be the move that everyone saw as a stroke of pure genius.

Samsung did not sell any extra phones because the have some brand ambassadors, if you remember correctly most the brand ambassadors were found to be using Iphone not Samsung products. Plus this whole Brand Ambassador concept has not work for electronics like it does on fashion items like Nike shoes.

I still stand by my comments most Indians do not buy on brand nor are they your typical aspirational buyers. They buy base on price and if they can get a knock off for less they will buy that over the real things.

foggyhill

maestro64 said:

the.bear said:

To be fair, Samsung's billions in annual profit selling Android devices - when the other Android OEMs make hundreds of millions to $1 billion in a good year and break even in a bad one - is due primarily to their massive marketing campaigns. Other companies produce good hardware, and yes other companies have copied Apple. Samsung is the only one who managed to pull it off, and do so in North America and western Europe selling tens of millions of Galaxy S and Galaxy Note devices that cost $800. Perhaps if LG had hired LeBron James instead of Joseph Gordon-Levitt (?) or gotten their hooks into Steph Curry before he became the face of the NBA and snapped up by Apple they would be doing better. HTC for their part did hire Robert Downey Jr. (and Jason Statham who is huge in Europe and Asia) but did not have enough money to actually use them in TV ads that anybody actually saw.

Shah Rukh Khan will probably help Apple make inroads with Indian populace that can afford their products today, which would help Apple become an aspirational brand for people who will join India's middle and upper classes tomorrow. That is probably Apple's real problem in India: it is not an aspirational brand there the way that it is in China and Japan (and South Korea). That is why none of the Android device makers have made creating lookalike iPhones a strategy point the way that manufacturers have for the Chinese and Japanese markets. That is consistent with how you build an image and a brand.

Although it may have been totally by accident, Samsung's going with LeBron - and remember they were also a partner with Beats - worked like spades for them too. I guess you can say that where Apple had the "suburban" constituency for the iPhone, Samsung was able to get the "urban" one. Their campaign painted iPhone owners as brand-conscious and elitist and not concerned with more practical stuff like multi-tasking, battery life, screen size and the latest tech.  Then again, it probably wasn't accidental at all. I just remembered: Samsung America came up with that marketing strategy. The headquarters in Korea got all nationalist and forced them out with bogus fraud type investigations because they couldn't handle the Yanks outdoing them in their own company. After that Samsung started managing the North American marketing efforts from Korea, and sales for the Galaxy S5 and S6 cratered. They had to do a total corporate reshuffling with younger, more western-influenced executives taking over the company for the S7 to rebound.

So if this actor is able to do for Apple in India what Michael Jordan did for Nike, then 5 years from now this will be the move that everyone saw as a stroke of pure genius.

Samsung did not sell any extra phones because the have some brand ambassadors, if you remember correctly most the brand ambassadors were found to be using Iphone not Samsung products. Plus this whole Brand Ambassador concept has not work for electronics like it does on fashion items like Nike shoes.

I still stand by my comments most Indians do not buy on brand nor are they your typical aspirational buyers. They buy base on price and if they can get a knock off for less they will buy that over the real things.

Most Indians cant even buy a smart phone so not sure what your point is. The top 10% of Indian society make $35K a year (that's 140M people) and not sure why they'd buy only on price? Even if you take only the $75K people, tha'ts still more than 40M people, if Apple eventually has a 50% of that market, that's 20M phones just in that segment.

Indian are crazy about their stars and they're big luxury buyers (more proportionally to income than us). Smart phones in India and most of Asia are seen as luxury items were brands are important

radster360

JoP said:

Shah Rukh Khan has 19.7 million followers on Twitter, 19.1 million likes on his Facebook page, and 2 million followers on Instagram. He's also the 2nd wealthiest actor in the world and the 7th-highest paid actor, according to Forbes. He's a brand in himself, so I'd say he's the a big enough celebrity to sell Apple's brand to the world. The fact that he owns his own special effects company and is a real tech nerd is icing on the cake. Perfect pairing.

Exactly! People in western countries (especially US) are very clueless on how significant are some of the Bollywood stars on world stage. I am recall he is a brand ambassador of Rolex and/or Omega too. I am sure Tim didn't make his decision on fly - He was probably advised to do so. I am sure, we will also see Amitabh Bachan, who is a another great Bollywood actor added to the list. If I was Apple, I would add Sachin Tendulkar (The God of Cricket for Indians), though Mukesh Ambani might not have been a brand ambassador for any companies other than his own Reliance, but his company is laying down the 4G LTE in India and I can just see him promoting Apple also (reminds me of AT&T and 1st get iPhone)

anantksundaram

Soli said:

"Hello, I'm a Mac."
"And I'm an Untouchable."

I realize you're trying to be cute and possibly funny, but that's a fucking moronic post.