ArpitGarg's Weblog

So Aamir Khan is no longer a face of Incredible India Brand Building Campaign. Media debates and public discourse followed. Diverse views of vendetta and course correction were put forward. Let’s look at this decision from the brand point of view.

Aamir is promoting India as a tourist friendly country to get more and more people to visit India. And when he discusses how his wife wanted to leave India due to intolerance and he too feels despondency in the air, what it does to the brand India? Tourists would be like, “Dude the brand ambassador of India himself does not feel safe in India, to hell with going there. Let’s party in Ibiza”.

Won’t a responsible CEO pull up the ads and replace the brand ambassador to save the brand? This is what exactly Indian Govt. has done. When Aamir did the movie PK, and if he went on air and said, “I felt I should not have done PK. is the most pathetic movie ever made. Waste of time, don’t watch it”, wouldn’t it had affected the movie? Of course it would have. Wouldn’t the producer pull away Aamir from movie promotions?

What if Aamir had said, Coco Cola is a pesticide disguised as a soft drink, wouldn’t he have been replaced and contract scrapped. He might also have been sued by the company. If tomorrow I publicly badmouth the firm I work at, would I not be pulled up and subjected to disciplinary action. Does it really infringe my freedom of speech? Those who sympathize with Aamir and berate the Govt, try badmouthing your employer. Scared? You should be.

Aamir Khan is doing Incredible India for free. And here lies the problem. When you do something for free, you don’t have anything to lose. Had it been a 10cr/year contract, he would have thought 10 times before damaging the brand. He would fear losing the contract. I don’t blame him, we all are like that.

I would suggest Govt whoever they choose as the brand ambassador, either pay him/she well or if they refuse to be paid, ask them to sign a contract which mentions that their actions in any way should not demean the brand India.