After Argentine football legend Diego Maradona, Brazilian World Cupper Ronaldinho Gaucho may visit Kolkata. Amway India, the second largest direct selling company in the US, is likely to bring him to India, its seventh largest market. Ronaldinho may come to campaign for the Amway brand of health products, which make 50% of the Amway India’s market.
William S Pickney, Amway India’s chief executive officer and managing director, said: “Although Ronaldinho is Amway’s global brand ambassador, our activities with him are concentrated mostly in the US, Latin America and Europe.”
“We have Mathew Hayden as our brand ambassador in Australia and likewise we were looking for someone in India. But none among who are into the business of endorsing brands seemed to be suitable for us,” Pickney said. Mahendra Singh Dhoni, he said, is known to be endorsing 21 brands, which does not create an impression about brand loyalty.
In Amway’s model of business, where a business owner himself must be a user of Amway products, the brand ambassador for himself should have to be endorsing only one brand of a particular product category.
In India, the business of branding does not go that way and so finding a brand ambassador for the Indian market that was agreeing with Amway’s way of business was becoming an increasingly difficult task.
The craze for Maradona in India is an eye opener for Amway and the company can think about considering Ronaldinho as its brand ambassador in India as well.
Pickney said Ronaldinho endorses only Amway products world wide in the health products segment even as he endorses other brands in various other segments. This reflects his loyalty for the brand and his knowledge of business.
Despite economic downturn, Amway’s growth has not been hindered and it expects to touch Rs 3000 crore turnover in the Indian market by 2009 from an expected Rs 1000 crore by the end of this calendar year. Amway is expecting a global turnover of $8 billion in 2008 compared with $7.2 billion in the previous year.
Although India is the largest market in growth terms, Amway foresees a Rs 3000 crore business in India by 2009 from 1 billion population vis-a-vis a turnover of Rs 15,000 crore in Mexico from 90 million population, Pickney said.