Even as Bollywood is calculating its looming losses after the Tada court slapped a six year imprisonment verdict on Sanjay Dutt, corporate India seems to be grappling with issues related to the impact of Dutt?s incarceration on its image. Companies which has so far raked in the moolah, using Bollywood?s poster boy Munnabhai as their brand ambassador, have promptly decided to drop him to protect their brand image.
Kolkata-based garment manufacturing company Rupa & Company has stopped airing advertisements for Rupa Frontline whose brand ambassador is Sanjay Dutt. K B Agarwal managing director, Rupa & Company told FE, ?After hearing the verdict, we have stopped airing advertisements of Rupa Frontline with Sanjay Dutt. We will wait for Supreme Court?s verdict. Depending on the verdict, we will decide to drop him from being a brand ambassador of Rupa Frontline.? The company has also already started evaluating options to sign another filmstar to be the new face of Rupa Frontline advertisements.
Interestingly, the UB Group Spirits division had announced signing of the Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt as its brand ambassador for the popular whisky brand Bagpiper, wherein he would have made a dramatic entry in a typical Bollywood style by saying the famous Bagpiper line, ?Khoob Jamega rang, jab mil baithenge teen yaar, aap, mai aur Bagpiper!. However, company sources, when contacted by FE said, ?Although we had announced signing Sanjay Dutt as a brand ambassador, we have used him in very few ads and things did not work out. He is not our brand ambassador.?
Hygienic Research Institute, the name behind the Vasmol range of products that has launched ?Yogiraj? Thanda Tel, had recently signed Sanjay Dutt as its brand ambassador to compete with the popular brand Navratan Tel, from the House of Emami, which boasts of big names like Shah Rukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan as its icons.