How long-term celebrity tie-ups strengthen brand trust

For decades, celebrity endorsements in India have often followed a volume strategy, with brands working with multiple faces across campaigns and platforms. This story looks at a very different approach that is quietly gaining strength. It explores why some brands are choosing long term, single celebrity partnerships instead of spreading budgets across many influencers. At the centre is Blue Star Limited, which brought in Virat Kohli as its first ever brand ambassador to shift consumer perception from a B2B legacy brand to a mass household name.

This philosophy mirrors other enduring partnerships such as Hyundai Motor India with Shah Rukh Khan, Kent RO Systems with Hema Malini, and Asian Paints with Amitabh Bachchan. In a fragmented media world, consistency and repetition are emerging as powerful tools to build familiarity, trust and long-term brand memory.

Why Blue Star is betting big on one face

Girish Hingorani, VP – Marketing (Cooling & Purification Appliances) & Corporate Communications at Blue Star, said, “For over 80 years, we never had a brand ambassador in our history. When we signed up with Virat Kohli in 2019, there was a particular objective in our mind,” Girish explained.

The biggest challenge was perception. Blue Star had long been seen as a strong B2B and office-focused brand, even though it had entered the residential AC market in 2011. The company needed to rapidly increase awareness among mass consumers. “We needed to be known more to the masses rather than only a small set of audiences. Many people didn’t even know we existed from a residential perspective,” he said, adding that a celebrity was necessary to accelerate mass appeal.

Geography also played a key role. While the brand had strong equity in South India, North India remained a relatively weaker market despite being a major contributor to industry sales. “We wanted a brand ambassador who would cut across the country, but more prominently in the North and appeal to all sets of audiences,” Girish noted. According to him, Kohli has helped “dial up our saliency in the North and helped us be recognised as a home player.”

Importantly, Blue Star sees celebrity endorsement as a top-funnel strategy. “Virat Kohli helps us get the top-funnel recognition. He may not help us get conversion, but he helps us get into the consideration set,” Girish said.

This clear role definition is also why the brand has resisted adding more celebrity faces. Instead of spreading budgets across multiple endorsers, the company prefers to amplify one powerful ambassador. “If it means investing a lot of money, there is no point in taking level-two celebrities when I already have the biggest celebrity in my portfolio. I’d rather spend all my marketing money on promoting him rather than diluting it.”

Girish also emphasised that celebrity and influencer marketing serve different purposes. While Kohli drives brand building and awareness, the company relies on credible gadget and appliance reviewers to influence purchase decisions during the research phase. “One creates more of brand building, one creates more of sales for me. That’s how we work.”

Hyundai’s long-standing star power strategy

For over 25 years, Hyundai Motor India and Shah Rukh Khan have shared one of India’s longest-running and most iconic brand partnerships, a relationship the superstar himself once compared to a marriage. As SRK famously joked, “In India, we believe in the institution of marriage, and Hyundai and I have been married for ages.”

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That sentiment perfectly captures how the association has evolved from building trust when Hyundai first entered India to now representing innovation, technology and emotion at scale. Even as Hyundai adopts a more layered marketing strategy and recently onboarded Pankaj Tripathi to broaden its appeal, SRK remains the brand’s enduring face and emotional anchor.

This legacy continues in Hyundai’s latest campaign around the ICC Men's T20 World Cup, where SRK brings together cricket fandom, nostalgia and storytelling, proving that while the brand evolves, its star power partnership remains stronger than ever.

The power of a long-term celebrity partnership

For more than a decade, Hema Malini has been associated with Kent RO Systems, representing its range of water purifiers, air purifiers and kitchen appliances. Over the years, the partnership has aimed to highlight the brand’s focus on health, purity and safety.

In 2020, the company faced criticism related to an advertisement for its Atta Maker. Despite the situation, the association between the brand and the actor continued. The longevity of this relationship reflects a level of continuity that is less common at a time when many brands opt for short-term influencer campaigns. Such sustained partnerships can, over time, make a celebrity closely linked with a brand’s public identity.

A similar story of enduring trust exists between Asian Paints and Amitabh Bachchan. For more than two decades, Bachchan has been the voice of the brand across television, print and digital campaigns, embodying reliability and emotional connection with Indian families. As campaigns evolved from humour driven ads to emotional storytelling around homes and relationships, the partnership remained constant. Both Kent and Asian Paints show that when a celebrity truly represents the values of a brand, repetition builds familiarity and familiarity builds trust, turning an endorsement into a long lasting brand legacy.