Celeb Watch

Are you sick of seeing Aamir Khan on the tube? The Bollywood superstar, who features in a slew of ads including the Government’s Atithi Devo Bhava campaign, and is promoting his upcoming production venture Peepli Live, appears in ad breaks on most channels every few minutes, as part of one endorsement or another. While TV buffs feel it’s an Aamir over-kill, advertisers say that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Too much
“Aamir’s following in SRK and Amitabh Bachchan’s footsteps! He’s always on air with some product,” says Mohit Ahuja, 21. “I get confused which ad is for which product; he looks and sounds the same in all,” says Smriti Khanna, 18. “Every ad break on every show has an Aamir ad!! Enough!” says Mona Sahni, 25.

It may be working
Industry experts, however, think overexposure is not a cause for worry in this case. “If he is all over the place and a fatigue sets in, the market will tell us; if not, he is clearly working,” explains Indu Malini of FCB Ulka. “An actor like Aamir can be used in versatile ways that will give each individual ad an identity. If he is used as Aamir Khan — the actor — it will seem repetitive,” explains Sainath Sarban, executive director, Leo Burnett. Titus Upputuru of Saatchi & Saatchi says, “If the story and plot are different, no one minds. He shouldn’t be like Shah Rukh, who looks the same in every ad.”

But, be careful
“Anything, when overdone, has its repercussions, and fatigue does creep in. That’s what happened to Amitabh Bachchan six years ago,” said Manish Porwal of Alchemist, a talent management firm. Celebrity manager Bunty Sajdeh says the overdose should only be temporary: “There’s no fatigue yet, but  he does not have the screen presence of SRK, so he should be careful.”

Palekar takes a dig
Veteran actor Amol Palekar, whose directorial venture And Once Again releases on the same day as Aamir Khan’s production Peepli Live, is fed up of the hype Aamir has created about his movie.

“We must salute Aamir for being able to create such hype for the film, which otherwise may have not gathered half as much excitement. But I don’t have the money to promote my film in the same way, and I have never screamed from rooftops about how good my film is,” said Palekar, taking the actor on.