DOES BRAND ENDORSEMENTS HELP DURING RECESSION

We know that the major cause for the global economic melt down is the sub prime crisis in U.S. It had its effect on the global economy, including India. In India, many of the banks like ICICI, SBI had its exposure in the U.S FII’s. State Bank of India (SBI) has $5 million exposure to Lehman Brothers against its global balance sheet of $250 billion. ICICI UK subsidiary has 18% exposure to US market i.e. 375cr and people started withdrawing this amount from the bank which resulted in a drastic reduction in ICICI Bank share price on the BSE by around 26%. The drop in share price has its reasons like decline in confidence of the customers because of its
exposure in US FIIS. In this situation it had to regain its brand value by sending a message of trust.



For this it had chosen Shahrukh khan, the biggest bollywood star, for promoting the message of trust to the customers. The strategy actually has helped ICICI control the panic selling. This actually cannot be viewed and cannot be represented in any form, because the stock prices were still going down even after the ad. The decrease in the stock prices is because of macroeconomic reasons, i.e. recession in U.S. The entire bank industry was being affected. The ad only helped build confidence in customers and therefore preventing them from withdrawing their amount from the bank.