Once an actor, always a model

it's paying mega bucks to secure top-of-the-line celebrity endorsements. after all, big business is where the big fish are. models are good, actors are better. enter, bollywood. enter, a host of tinsel-town twinklers who are out to give the strut-and-smile style of models on the rampage a run for their money. it's an ad-mad world out there. if the big b backs bpl, pretty preity monkeys around with a bottle of pepsi.salman khan, in turn, has grown up to thums up. tamarind is the taste on hritik roshan's lips. then, fardeen khan, the latest luminary from bollywood to jump on the brandwagon, has taken to wearing his heart and provogue on his sleeve. the stakes are high. one-upmanship is the name of the game. or, perhaps, it's `extra mileage', as companies claim. a slice of star power, of course, comes at a price. "they might be expensive, but they deliver the results we want. people can relate better with big-screen stars than with professional models. by featuring in films, bollywood's actors have acquired a definite image -- something which no model can claim to have. besides, a model can never attain the icon status attendant on certain stars," reasons provogue md salil chaturvedi. but the bigger they are, the pricier they come. the six-figure price tag of the model scales the eight-digit figure (a crore and more) when bollywood is part of the business. sources in the ad industry have it that actors are paid anything between rs 1 crore and rs 8 crore for a campaign. "if an ad agency paid rs 35 lakh to shah rukh khan for a campaign a couple of years ago, he is getting rs 2-3 crore now for similar campaigns. hrithik and kareena command a similar price tag. as for the real big bucks, it takes an amitabh to command a price of rs 8 crore," informs an industry insider. "oh, they get all the money!" laughs model sheetal mallar, "okay, that was a joke. but the fact is that film stars are looked upon as demi-gods in india. but this is definitely not unsettling, at least for me." squeezing themselves into the small screen after hitting the big time on the big screen might sound like a comedown, but bollywood certainly recognises a good deal when it sees one. as jackie shroff, who appeared in the red & white campaign sometime back, puts it, "it's certainly not for fun, it's pure business." but is it bollywood's business to put models out of business? "no way, there is room enough for everyone, what with new products and brands entering the market every other day," reasons jaggu dada, "on the contrary, it's just the other way round. the entry of models into movies might be unsettling for actors!" the big fish only fall for big bait. but price is no object for the rs 8,000-crore indian ad industry. or so it seems. lux presents a case in point. it's either bollywood or hollywood for this soap opera, depending on the country for which a campaign is created. but it's not just the glitter of starry shine which attracts the ad man. "the future prospects of an actor or actress in the industry plays a big part while deciding on who to sign on for a particular campaign," says ogilvy & mather creative head sunil v, "we source a star's roles, forthcoming films and, most importantly, his or her success rate before proposing a deal." ad agencies never had it so good. and they never had so many reasons to explain the paradigm shift in preferences. anil rawat, the creative director of chadha, dhar & hoon -- the ad agency behind amitabh bachchan's bpl brand-stand -- offers his opinion: "an actor of bachchan's calibre and stature carries credibility beyond imagination. and when such an actor endorses a particular brand, the impact is tremendous. models do have a role to play in commercials, but the identification factor associated with heroes and heroines tips the scales in their balance." the heavyweights would appear to be making light work of the tip-toeing catwalkers. no one's nonplussed though. how it all ads up, we'll take our time to figure out