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Amitabh Bachchan has signed a deal with Eveready Industries Ltd to promote the company's batteries.
With Bachchan agreeing to mouth the catch-line, 'Give me Red,' the Kolkata-based battery and torch major Eveready hopes to make its flagship brand the undisputed number one.
"Amitabh is the best possible brand ambassador one can think of. And when we decided to rebuild the Eveready brand there was no second thought," EIL vice chairman and managing director Deepak Khaitan said.
Khaitan, who announced the company's decision to rope in Big B as the brand ambassador at a conference of the sales and marketing people of EIL in Bangkok on Sunday, said that the move was aimed at charging up the entire team.
"I can feel the difference in attitude of my sales people and I am more than confident that Amitabh is going to do wonders for the Eveready brand," he said.
Although he refused to disclose the financial details of the two-year deal with Amitabh he said that it was a 'major decision' by the company as, "we plan to put everything in this brand re-building plan to make Eveready undisputed number one by 2005 when it will be 100 years old as a brand."
"There will be a sustained brand promotion activity this year and next year to take our market share to beyond 50 per cent," he said, adding that Eveready is already the number one brand by increasing its market share to 46 per cent from 42 per cent in the previous year.
He said that EIL has just crossed the magic sales figure of one billion batteries and now wants to substantially increase it by growing above the industry expected growth of 9 per cent.
Khaitan said that in the past couple of years the FMCG sector has not done too well as consumer's money has mainly gone into the lifestyle segment but, "now with economy showing a healthy growth and agriculture sector booming we expect the FMCG sector to take off."
When asked whether the decision to take on Amitabh as brand ambassador was not too late as he has already been used for many products, Khaitan said that nobody could match the acceptability factor of Big B.
"He is popular among all age groups and equally accepted in both northern and southern parts of country. We could not have had a better choice," Khaitan said.
The company, he said, has decided to divert its entire sale promotional expense toward this campaign which would be mainly on TV and media channels.
To a another query he said that Big B would be only promoting batteries and torches and not the tea brands sold by EIL.