Why India’s FMCG brands are pulling back from big-ticket celeb deals  

While the headline decline in celebrity endorsements is visible, category-level data from TAM AdEx helps explain why brands are rethinking where star power fits. The slowdown comes alongside an overall contraction in television advertising volumes, which fell 11 percent year-on-year in 2025, as per the TAM AdEx Television Advertising Recap. While food and beverages and personal care continued to dominate ad volumes, brands became more cautious about high-cost endorsement deals amid tighter budgets and slowing demand.

The retreat from A-list celebrities is closely tied to margin pressure across fast-moving consumer goods and direct-to-consumer companies. With inflation easing through 2025, FMCG players increasingly prioritised volume-led growth over price hikes. In this environment, marketing spends are being scrutinised more sharply, forcing brands to reassess the cost-benefit equation of celebrity-led campaigns.

Anirban Banerjee, CEO, Eveready Industries India Ltd, said, “For legacy brands to remain relevant to newer demographics such as millennials and Gen Z, the way they sustain themselves over decades has to evolve. In today’s age, this can only be achieved by leveraging influencers. I strongly believe micro-influencing will play a significant role in shaping word of mouth, driving relevance, and helping brands stay contemporary.”

Sandeep Goyal, Managing Director at Rediffusion, said, “Not surprised by the 22% decline in 2025 celebrity endorsements. Most celebrities have priced themselves out of the market. Top bracket ones ask for 8-10 crores a year with at best one day of shoot time and eventually want a script that is more about themselves rather than the brand. So there had to be a back track at some point of time. Maybe the dip will be more severe in the days ahead till celebrity costs cool down to more realistic levels.

Influencers may have gained. They come cheaper. But the next backlash will come when brands start to figure that follower ship figures are highly inflated. So corrections in business are ongoing.”

At the heart of this shift is a growing demand for accountability. Traditional celebrity television campaigns offer scale, but their direct impact on sales has long been difficult to quantify. In contrast, influencer-led campaigns allow brands to track performance across engagement, traffic and conversions, making them easier to optimise in real time.

This approach has particular relevance for digital-first categories such as food delivery and beauty, where customer acquisition costs and lifetime value are closely monitored. Brands are increasingly favouring marketing channels that allow them to link spend directly to outcomes rather than relying on broad awareness alone.

Nykaa’s collaboration with Snapchat to support Gen Z beauty creators reflects this change in approach. Instead of focusing on one-off star endorsements, brands are investing in creator ecosystems that can be scaled over time. Market analysts have responded positively to such strategies, with Nykaa receiving a ‘Buy’ rating upgrade on January 20, 2026, indicating confidence in its long-term execution.

Cipla Health Ltd CEO Shivam Puri, emphasised that every rupee spent on media must be closely linked to business outcomes. He said marketers should clearly map inputs against outcomes themselves, rather than relying on external validation.

“Every rupee you spend on the media, be conscious of what it is doing to the business. You should be the one linking outcomes with inputs more than anyone else. Successful campaigns speak for themselves, and when they do, more money flows in to create even more success,” Puri said.

Sharing his perspective on measuring influencer marketing ROI, Puri noted that it remains a challenging area and largely depends on the campaign objective. According to him, influencer marketing works best when it is layered on top of a larger, core campaign rather than executed in isolation.

“Influencer investment works beautifully when it adds to an existing campaign. It works like icing on the cake. A standalone influencer campaign is very difficult to measure because the influencer audience is highly fragmented,” he explained.

Puri pointed out that while brands often track reach and impressions, measuring actual mindset or behaviour change among audiences exposed to influencers is far more complex.

“To truly measure impact, you would need to go back to the audience and ask what changed in their mind, which is difficult to execute at scale,” he said.

He added that while brands do set objectives for influencer campaigns, agencies currently struggle to clearly demonstrate whether those objectives have been met, making ROI measurement a “soft” and evolving metric in influencer marketing today.

Pradeep Patteti, Co-Founder and CEO at Flutch, a Bengaluru-based influencer marketing agency, said, “That marketing is becoming more accountable. Brands are reallocating budgets toward influencers and creators because these channels offer faster experimentation, clearer ROI, and deeper audience relevance.

Influencers are not replacing celebrities one-to-one, but they are absorbing a large part of the mid-tier and performance-driven spend. Celebrities will continue to play a role in big-bang awareness campaigns, while creators are becoming the engine for always-on storytelling, community building, and conversions.

Categories like FMCG, beauty, food and beverages, and digital commerce are leading this shift, as purchase decisions in these sectors are increasingly influenced by trust, peer validation, and product experience. We are also seeing brands move from one-off celebrity endorsements to long-term influencer partnerships, because consistency drives stronger brand equity and measurable outcomes.

This trend is visible globally, but in India it is accelerating due to margin pressure and a digital-first consumer base that values authenticity over polish. At Flutch, we are seeing a clear increase in demand for creator-led and performance-driven campaigns, and we strongly believe the future of brand building lies in combining creativity with data, relevance, and measurable impact.”

Beyond cost and performance, the decline in celebrity endorsements has also brought renewed attention to accountability in advertising. Industry experts point out that celebrity influence shapes consumer behaviour at scale, often outweighing product details or statutory disclosures.

Concerns around misleading endorsements have prompted regulators in India and globally to issue stricter guidelines, particularly for food, health and personal care advertising. However, enforcement has struggled to keep pace with the scale of influence celebrities command.

As brands reassess endorsement strategies, the conversation is shifting from mere visibility to responsibility. The current downturn in celebrity-led advertising is increasingly viewed as a structural correction rather than a temporary pause, driven by economic pressure, changing consumer expectations and a growing demand for transparency.