Everyone wants to look better

In a country where matrimonial ad pages are dotted with requests for “fair-complexioned” girls, it comes as no surprise that a fairness cream has roped in the relatively light-skinned Bollywood darling, Shah Rukh Khan, as its key endorser.

Lately, however, Khan's attempt to get more men to use Emami’s popular skin-lightening product, Fair and Handsome, has raised the hackles of some social commentators.

“When the reigning star of Hindi cinema publicly endorses a cream that openly advocates fairness, lightness of skin as desirable, nay, necessary, it is a damn bad show. How could he do it?” wrote columnist Shailaja Bajpai in The Indian Express daily. She pointed to a media report that said Shah Rukh took eight months to agree to do the ad, and asked: “What overcame his scruples? Money?”

In the television ad, released a few weeks ago, Shah Rukh persuades a dark-complexioned youth using a women’s product, Fair and Lovely, to switch to Fair and Handsome. The young man complies and turns noticeably whiter, attracting attention from a group of women.

Indian ad guru Alyque Padamsee, who was responsible for a successful Fair and Lovely ad campaign in the 1970s, and the Fair and Handsome launch in 2005, rejected charges that the products enforced skin color biases. “All fairness products are really appearance enhancing, more to do with brightness than fairness,” he said.

Fair and Lovely and Fair and Handsome are currently among the fastest-selling consumer goods at their respective companies, Emami and Hindustan Unilever Limited.

“Everyone wants to look better. What’s the difference between a woman using lipstick, Europeans using skin-tan lotion, and an Indian skin lightening cream?” Padamsee asked Forbes.com.

“Market research for the company showed that 25% of the users of Fair and Handsome were men, so I suggested we should push a separate cream for men. Even without endorsements, it’s been a huge success,” he said, adding that the product had made over $12 million in sales within nine months of launching.

Padamsee said Shah Rukh backed the idea only when Emami convinced him that it would not perpetuate colonial hangups over fair skin in India.

Shah Rukh may have it easier because women in India, not men, are under societal pressure to be fair. “The controversy is over women feeling the pressure to be fair. I don’t think an advertisement for a men’s cream has the same impact,” media commentator Sevanti Ninan said.

Shah Rukh, whose latest release, Chak De, is yet another box office hit, is getting paid a reported $1.2 million from Emami to endorse its products. The star has put his name behind a host of products, including for PepsiCo and Hindustan Lever. His ad for the popular soap brand Lux featured him in a bathtub filled with rose petals, a first for macho-man loving Bollywood.

Movie stars give a product tremendous saliency in a country where they are often hero-worshipped, said Padamsee. Popular stars like Shah Rukh and Amitabh Bachhan can make as much as $25 million on their multiple advertisements, he said. In Bollywood, the big stars are known to make the bulk of their riches from lucrative ad deals instead of from big banner films that pay relatively less.

Though stars lend their names to the smallest of brands in India, product sales for the lesser-known products tend to lag after their campaigns end, Padamsee said. Contracts are usually for two years.

Ruth David, ForbesMarket