Vivo’s Marketing Strategy With Aamir Khan and Virat Kohli

Vivo brings together Bollywood star power and cricket popularity through Aamir Khan and Virat Kohli. Their campaigns give Vivo different ways to connect with Indian consumers, combining mass appeal, product communication, tournament visibility, and digital engagement across its smartphone marketing.

Vivo has built a strong presence in India's smartphone market by combining product-focused communication with high-profile celebrity marketing. Two of the most recognisable names associated with its Indian campaigns have been Bollywood actor Aamir Khan and cricketer Virat Kohli.

The two celebrities bring very different public identities to the brand. Kohli connects Vivo with cricket, competition, performance and younger digital audiences, while Aamir Khan brings a broader family audience through humour, storytelling and familiar everyday situations.

Their roles show how a smartphone brand can use different celebrity personalities for different communication needs. Kohli can become especially visible around major cricket tournaments, while Aamir can carry campaigns that need a wider, more narrative-led appeal.

Vivo's marketing also extends beyond individual advertisements. Its celebrity campaigns have been supported through television, print, outdoor advertising, social media, events, product launches and fan activities. During major cricket seasons, these channels allow the brand to maintain a strong presence while connecting smartphone features with the excitement around the sport.

Vivo and Virat Kohli: Connecting Smartphones With Cricket

Virat Kohli's association with Vivo gives the brand a direct connection with one of India's biggest sports audiences. His competitive image and visibility in cricket allow Vivo to place its smartphones within a high-energy environment.

• From Cricket Performance to Product Performance

Kohli's campaigns can connect ideas of competition, precision and performance with smartphone features. This is particularly useful for product communication around premium and camera-focused smartphone ranges. Rather than explaining technical specifications on their own, the campaign can use Kohli's sporting image to give those features a more familiar context.

• Reaching Young Cricket Audiences

Kohli's popularity gives Vivo access to cricket viewers across younger demographics, including millennials and Gen Z audiences. His presence also works across different media formats. A television commercial can introduce a product, while social media content, tournament advertising and digital campaigns can continue the same association with audiences beyond the main advertisement.

• Making Fans Part of the Campaign

Vivo has also used fan-focused activities around cricket tournaments. Campaigns such as #PerfectFan created opportunities for cricket viewers to participate and potentially meet Kohli. This changes the celebrity relationship from simply watching an advertisement to taking part in a branded activity. For Vivo, such campaigns create another point of interaction around its association with cricket.

Vivo and IPL Marketing: Building Visibility Around Cricket

Cricket tournaments provide Vivo with a large and highly engaged viewing environment. The Indian Premier League has been an important part of the brand's sports marketing, giving its celebrity communication a wider platform.

• Timing Product Launches With Cricket

Vivo has timed major smartphone communication, including V-series launches, around periods when cricket attracts significant audience attention. This creates a practical marketing connection. New products can receive visibility at the same time that consumers are already spending more time watching matches, following players and discussing cricket online.

• Expanding the Campaign Across Platforms

Tournament marketing does not depend on one advertising format. Vivo can place celebrity-led communication across television, digital media, social platforms, outdoor advertising and event spaces. Kohli's recognisable presence helps maintain continuity across these channels, allowing the same campaign to appear in different forms during the tournament period.

• Turning Tournament Attention Into Product Attention

Cricket creates the audience, but the smartphone remains the product focus. Celebrity campaigns can use the excitement around matches to introduce camera capabilities, performance features and other product messages. This allows Vivo to connect an entertainment-heavy environment with a commercial product launch.

Vivo and Aamir Khan: A Different Kind of Celebrity Appeal

Aamir Khan gives Vivo a different communication style. His campaigns can rely more heavily on storytelling, humour and everyday situations rather than the competitive energy associated with sports advertising.

• Making Technology Easier to Understand

Smartphone technology can involve specifications and features that are difficult for some consumers to understand through technical communication alone. Aamir's narrative-led campaigns provide a way to place these features within familiar situations. Humour and simple storytelling can make the product message easier to follow for viewers who may not be highly focused on technical details.

• Reaching Family Audiences

Aamir's long-standing recognition across different age groups gives Vivo access to a broader household audience. This complements the younger, cricket-focused audience associated with Kohli. Instead of relying on one celebrity personality for every consumer group, Vivo can use different public figures according to the audience it wants to address.

• Building Campaigns Around Storytelling

Aamir's role works particularly well when the advertisement needs a character-driven narrative. The product can become part of a short story, with the celebrity helping audiences understand the feature through a situation rather than a list of specifications. This gives the communication a different rhythm from a high-energy sports campaign.

Aamir Khan and Virat Kohli: Two Different Marketing Roles

The value of using both celebrities comes from the contrast between their communication styles.

The distinction allows Vivo to build different campaign formats without forcing both celebrities into the same role.

How Vivo Uses 360-Degree Celebrity Marketing

Celebrity endorsement becomes more useful when the same campaign idea appears across several consumer touchpoints.

• Television and Digital Advertising - Television gives Vivo access to large audiences, while digital platforms allow the brand to extend campaigns through shorter videos, social posts and interactive content. Celebrity appearances help maintain a consistent identity across these formats.

• Outdoor and Stadium Visibility - Cricket tournaments also create physical spaces for Vivo's marketing. Stadium displays, outdoor advertising and other tournament placements can put the brand in front of audiences during the match experience. Kohli's association adds another layer of recognition to these placements.

• Events and Fan Engagement - Events and contests provide opportunities for audiences to interact with the brand rather than simply seeing its advertising. The #PerfectFan campaign is an example of how Vivo can use its association with Kohli to create a participation-based experience around cricket.

How Celebrity Roles Support Different Vivo Campaign Goals

Vivo's use of Aamir Khan and Virat Kohli demonstrates that celebrity marketing does not have to follow one format.

• Kohli Carries the Performance Message

Kohli's sporting identity gives Vivo a natural way to communicate ideas around performance, speed, competition and premium smartphone features. His image as a high-performance cricketer can support campaigns that focus on powerful technology, camera capabilities and fast-paced experiences.

His role becomes particularly relevant during cricket tournaments, when Vivo can connect product communication with the excitement and energy surrounding the sport. This also gives the brand opportunities to reach younger, cricket-focused audiences through television, stadium visibility and digital content.

• Aamir Carries the Story

Aamir's strength within Vivo's campaigns comes from a different place. His presence allows the brand to build advertisements around characters, humour and familiar everyday situations rather than relying only on product specifications.

This storytelling approach can make smartphone features easier to understand and give the advertisements a wider family appeal. Instead of presenting technology as purely technical, Aamir's campaigns can place the product within situations that viewers can recognise and relate to.

• Both Support Wider Brand Recognition

While their campaign roles differ, both celebrities contribute to Vivo's visibility in a crowded smartphone market. Their individual audiences also give the brand more ways to remain present across different forms of entertainment, media and consumer conversations.

The combination allows Vivo to communicate with different groups while keeping celebrity marketing connected to the wider Vivo identity. It also shows how a brand can build a broader communication strategy by giving each celebrity a clear role rather than making every campaign follow the same formula.

What Brands Can Learn From Vivo's Celebrity Strategy

Vivo's use of Aamir Khan and Virat Kohli offers several lessons for brands planning celebrity-led campaigns.

• Match the Celebrity to the Message

A celebrity works more effectively when the campaign idea fits their established public image. Virat Kohli's connection with cricket and high performance gives Vivo a natural way to communicate around speed, competition and technology.

This approach was visible when Vivo brought Kohli into its IPL 2021 marketing and created the #PerfectFan contest, which gave cricket fans opportunities to meet him, win signed bats and appear on live television during a match. The campaign connected Kohli's cricket identity with a larger fan experience around Vivo's IPL presence.

• Use Different Celebrities for Different Audiences

One celebrity does not have to carry every part of a brand's communication. Vivo's work with Aamir Khan shows how a different personality can support a different style of storytelling.

For the Vivo V19, Aamir appeared with his on-screen nephew Cheekoo in a series of films built around common selfie problems. The campaign used their conversations and humour to demonstrate the phone's camera features, giving the product a family-orientated storytelling format.

• Connect Celebrity Content With the Product

Celebrity recognition can attract attention, but the smartphone should remain central to the campaign. Vivo's V9 campaign with Aamir Khan is a strong example. The advertisements used simple situations involving his pets to demonstrate features such as Bokeh Mode and Shot Refocus with Dual Rear Cameras. The celebrity helped carry the story, while the phone's camera capabilities remained the main focus.

The same product-first approach appeared in the V11 Pro campaign, where separate films demonstrated features including the dual camera, under-display fingerprint sensor, fast charging and processor performance.

• Extend Campaigns Beyond the Main Advertisement

Television commercials are only one part of a larger celebrity campaign. Social media content, events, fan contests, outdoor advertising, stadium branding and tournament activity can give the partnership multiple ways to reach consumers.

These formats can also serve different purposes. A television commercial can introduce the campaign, while social media can encourage interaction, and contests can turn viewers into active participants. This creates several points of contact around the same celebrity partnership rather than depending on one advertisement.

The Bigger Picture

Vivo's association with Aamir Khan and Virat Kohli shows two different approaches to celebrity-led smartphone marketing. Kohli brings cricket, competition and high-energy product communication, making him particularly relevant to tournament-led campaigns and younger cricket audiences. Aamir brings humour, storytelling and broader household recognition, allowing Vivo to explain smartphone features through more familiar situations.

The two roles complement each other without needing to follow the same campaign formula. Vivo can use cricket to create large-scale visibility, celebrity storytelling to explain products and digital platforms to keep consumers engaged beyond the main advertisement.

For a smartphone brand operating in a competitive market, this creates a celebrity marketing structure where different personalities serve different communication purposes while remaining connected to the same product category.