Influencer popularity might be bad news for celebrities

Brands are shifting ad budgets from celebrity endorsements to influencers for better returns

- Pratishtha Bagai

Companies are ditching celebrities and moving to influencers for advertisements. Influencers are more affordable than celebrities, giving the brands better returns and conversions. This is slowly leading to companies cutting their celebrity endorsement marketing budgets and channeling them towards influencers.

"I strongly believe that influencer marketing is eliminating celebrity endorsement from a regular and monthly investment standpoint," said Jatan Bawa, founder of oral care brand Perfora. The entrepreneur explained that celebrity endorsements are being treated as one-off brand awareness-raising activities due to their high cost and need for precise messaging. In contrast, influencer marketing is cost-effective, leveraging the influencer's existing reach and eliminating the need for additional marketing expenditure.

In the past two years, the brand has spent 1-2% of its annual marketing budget on a few celebrity endorsements, but regularly spends 15% of the same budget on influencers. This comes to ₹20 lakh a month. "We will continue to press the pedal on influencer marketing because it helps us get more eyeballs from our target audience," Bawa said.