Virat Kohli sets the norm by refusing to endorse Pepsi

Virat Kohli said his decision was dictated by the fact that he did not consume the drink

Indian cricket team captain Virat Kohli’s decision not to renew his multi-crore contract to endorse the cola brand Pepsi has raised the game for the booming business of celebrity brand endorsements. Kohli said his decision was dictated by the fact that he did not consume the drink and, therefore, did not think it right to endorse it. As he explained it to the media, the drink was taboo in his punishing diet and fitness regimen and, as captain, he would not demand of his team-mates anything that he would not do. Kohli is not, of course, the leader in endorsement-abstinence. India’s badminton coach Pullela Gopichand was the first to decline the lures of a big-money cola contract in his heydays as a player and, since then, Sachin Tendulkar has similarly turned down a liquor endorsement proposal and Amitabh Bachchan stopped endorsing Pepsi after a young girl asked him why he promoted a drink that had “poison” — a reference to the controversy over pesticide levels in soft drinks.

 
These examples are so rare as to make headlines. Though many say that it took him six long years to figure out that the beverage brand was unhealthy (Kohli has been endorsing Pepsi since 2011), his stand is significant because he is a heroic role model to thousands of young girls and boys in a sport that constitutes a national passion. As a current player, the ambit of his influence is wide. His decision, thus, transmits two important messages. The first is on health and wellness grounds, an invaluable signal, given the depressing evidence of growing obesity among Indian kids owing to the indiscriminate consumption of junk food and sugary drinks.

 
The second concerns the question of principles — a factor that rarely figures when it comes to celebrities accepting the big-money contracts of large corporations. This issue came front and centre in 2015 when FIRs were filed against Bachchan, Madhuri Dixit and Preity Zinta for endorsing various products of international food major Nestle’s Maggi brand of flavoured noodles. This somewhat draconian move took place against the background of allegations by the Uttar Pradesh food safety standards administration that Maggi contained high levels of lead and the banned monosodium glutamate. All three actors had featured in prominent TV commercials endorsing Maggi for children as a tasty and healthy breakfast/snack food. Justified or not, the controversy raised, for the first time, the ethics of celebrity endorsements in the public discourse.

 

In India, there are scanty rules governing this field, which has given corporations and celebrities a free run. Bachchan, for instance, is known to endorse almost anything from children’s garments to cement. The food safety standards law does contain a fine for anyone found to be offering misleading information on a food brand, but the princely fine of up to Rs 10 lakh can hardly be considered a discouragement to actors who earn in crores. Whether a celebrity endorsement helps a brand is a moot point, though there is no gainsaying that some consumers somewhere may be influenced by watching their favourite cricketer or actor endorsing a product, only to find it wanting either in terms of performance or safety standards.

 
In sophisticated jurisdictions like the US, there are punitive laws for misleading endorsements and oversight rules that decree that the company concerned should have proof that the celebrity uses and has knowledge of the product he or she is endorsing. In India, a parliamentary standing committee recommended a rather more robust punishment: a fine of Rs 50 lakh and/or a jail term of up to five years for false endorsement. This may be tricky ground since the failure may equally be the company’s or the state’s. Until (and if) that becomes a law, self-restraint of the kind Kohli has demonstrated should become the gold standard for other celebrities.