“Class never goes out of style,” says actor Pierce Brosnan in a television commercial and newspaper advertisements for Pan Bahar. Created by the DDB Mudra group for the pan masala brand, the television commercial shows an agile white-haired former James Bond climbing out of an Aston Martin and beating up villains while flute music plays, all with the help of the new weapon in his artillery that appears to have replaced the shaken-not-stirred martini – a can of Pan Bahar.
Saif Ali Khan, who had starred in the local Bond knock-off Agent Vinod (2012), was the previous brand ambassador for the product, while Priyanka Chopra is the mascot of rival DS Group’s Rajnigandha Pearls.
Brosnan is the latest foreign celebrity to lend his name to an Indian brand. Australian actor Hugh Jackman was roped in by Micromax, Tata got footballer Lionel Messi to pitch for Tiago, while soccer great Diego Maradona was the brand ambassador of Chemmannur International Jewellers in Kerala.
Would Brosnan have endorsed a product that has severe health risks back home in the United States of America? The Twitterati is blaming it on Brexit (even though Brosnan is of Irish stock and an American citizen).
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