The Waving Flag of FIFA WorldCup 2010

Coca Cola has been a corporate partner to FIFA since 1978 and has now extended this partnership till 2022. It has been profitable brand association for the company and continues to be with the awesome global following for the FIFA WorldCup and other events organized by FIFA. But, brand building is just not advertising, in such partnerships its a massive involvement in all the campaigns that FIFA plans like encouraging young talent which are an equal responsibility of an associated brand, and majorly a top brand like Coca Cola.

Now,lets talk about the "OPEN HAPPINESS" campaign by CocaCola which captures the iconic moments in the Football WorldCup of players celebrating their goals,the moment when all supporters cheer and there is a sudden burst of emotions.This prominent TV commercial briefs more about the campaign



CAMPAIGN REVIEW

An excellent campaign that positions CocaCola as the drink for celebrations and targeting moment of celebrations in a WorldCup when we hear the commentator say - And Its a GOOAAALLLLLLL!!.The TVC is again a fantastic creation that targets the global markets potraying almost all the teams participating, and the popular music track - waving flag which sends across a motivating social message to all the young footballers that encourages young talent.
So to this complete package of global branding and perfect brand association Brandistics rates 9/10

South Africa 2010-Fifa Football World Cup Match Schedule Time Table - Week 2

Here is the schedule of the matches being played from June 21 to June 26. These are Subject to Change and Brandistics have No Responsibility for changes.

June 21 - Monday
12:00am – Brazil - Côte dIvoire – Johannesburg - JSC
05:00pm – Portugal - Korea – Cape Town
07:30pm – Chile - Switzerland – Nelson Mandela Bay PE

June 22 - Tuesday
12.00am – Spain - Honduras – Johannesburg - JEP
05.00pm –Mexico - Uruguay – Rustenburg
07.30pm – France - South Africa – Mangaung - Bloemfontein

June 23 - Wednesday
12.00am – Nigeria - Korea R – Durban
12.00am – Greece - Argentina – Polokwane
07.30pm – Slovenia - England – Nelson Mandela Bay PE
07.30pm – USA - Algeria – Tshwane - Pretoria

June 24 - Thursday
12.00am – Ghana - Germany – Johannesburg - JSC
12.00am – Australia - Serbia –Nelspruit
07.30pm – Slovakia - Italy – Johannesburg - JEP
07.30pm – Paraguay - New Zealand - Polokwane

June 25 - Friday
12.00am – Denmark - Japan – Rustenburg
12.00am – Cameroon - Netherlands – Cape Town
07.30pm – Portugal - Brazil – Durban
07.30pm – Korea - Côte dIvoire – Nelspruit

June 26 - Saturday
12.00am – Chile - Spain – Tshwane - Pretoria
12.00am – Switzerland - Honduras – Mangaung - Bloemfontein

Stay Tuned.... We will be back with the next round schedule soon.....

FIFA WorldCup 2010 - The Marketing Game Begins !!

FIFA WorldCup is the biggest global sporting event followed by millions across 200 countries, so probably the best brand to talk about in our Brand Of the Week segment. The sponsorships are hard faught for this mega event but, only a few get to eat the pie.
But, the bigger challenge than getting the sponsorship right is to be able to utillize it completely. In this context, Brandistics gives you the Big 5 rules of the game (marketing with FIFA WorldCup) that helps marketers/sponsers design the gameplan

1. Marketers get a huge field to play on i.e. the success of their campaign depends on how they ideate non-traditional promotions (other than traditional print, television etc..). The more innovatie and engaging campaign, the higher the brand recall achieved. So, it depends on the skills of the marketer if he is able to do the tricks with the ball and impress the audience.

2. Huge Target Market : The marketers get to capture all the segments as according to the top three most-cited TV viewing habits: "mostly watched with friends and family," - not only soccer crazy audience but also their pals get targeted
"watched even if my national team was not playing," - the non-playing nations get targeted
and "liked watching other players from other nations competing" - the national brand ambassadors are now global brand ambassadors for example, Indians like Cristiano Ronaldo rip through England defence to score a goal, Castrol the brand association of Ronaldo gets to target Indian market.

3. The goals are defined - According to the FIFA framework for sponsorship they are categorized under 3 levels:

4. Localization matters : Blending the local culture into your campaigns is important. This how you get more association to the bigger game, that is, when worldcup comes to Africa get all the celebration, dancing, noise into your campaigns.This gives an insight of how closely your brand is associated to FIFA WorldCup ,which has been an important consideration for audience to elevate the brand's image.

5. The final rule says follow the 4 rules stated above .period

FIFA 2010 Sponsorship - Importance to USA, Germany, India, China, Japan and South Korea

FIFA 2010 is on, and Brandistics is trying its best to report on the World Cup, whether it comes to the schedule or the betting odds (see widget at the top). But considering that we are a sports marketing blog, my attention on FIFA 2010 has involved the sponsors to the FIFA 2010 World Cup, more than a lot of things.

Figure this:

FIFA Sponsorship can be broken down into FIFA event partners and international sponsors apart from the local sponsors. Considering that the local sponsors should be belonging to the African continent, we decided to find out which countries do the other sponsors belong to. It is a huge event after all, the returns on this investment for the companies, might as well make or break them.

FIFA Partner	Home Country
Adidas	Germany
Coca Cola	USA
Emirates	UAE
Hyundai Kia	South Korea
Sony	Japan
Visa	USA

FIFA WC Sponsor	Home Country
Budweiser	Germany
Castrol	UK
Continental	Germany
McDonald's	USA
MTN	South Africa
Mahindra Satyam	India (Yeah!)
Seara	Brazil
Yingli Solar	China

Now, you see what I meant with the title. USA has got 3 companies, Germany has got 3 companies, UAE, China, Brazil, India, South Africa, UK, South Korea, Japan have each 1 company. Certainly, FIFA World Cup 2010 is more important to these countries than the other ones like Argentina or Spain who are poised to fight hard this World Cup!

South Africa 2010-Fifa Football World Cup Match Schedule Time Table

Looking at the immense popularity gained by Fifa World Cup 2010, we at Brandistics have thought to present our readers with the schedule of the matches on a weekly basis.

Here is the schedule of the matches being played from June 11 to June 20...


June 11 - Friday
07.30pm – South Africa Vs Mexico – Johannesburg (SC)

June 12 - Saturday
12.00am – Uruguay Vs France – Cape Townr
05.00pm – South Korea Vs Greece – Johannesburg (SC)
07.30pm – Argentina Vs Nigeria – Port Elizabeth (Ellis)

June 13 - Sunday
12.00am – England Vs USA – Rustenburg
05.00pm – Algeria Vs Slovenia – Polokwane
07.30pm – Serbia Vs Ghana – Pretoria

June 14 - Monday
12.00am – Germany Vs Australia – Durban
05.00pm – Netherlands Vs Denmark – Johannesburg (SC)
07.30pm – Japan Vs Cameroon – Bloemfontein

June 15 - Tuesday
12.00am – Italy Vs Paraguay – Cape Town
05.00pm – New Zealand Vs Slovakia – Rustenburg
07.30pm – Ivory Coast Vs Portugal – Port Elizabeth

June 16 - Wednesday
12.00am – Brazil Vs North Korea – Johannesburg (Ellis)
05.00pm – Honduras Vs Chile – Nelspruit
07.30pm – Spain Vs Switzerland – Durban

June 17 - Thursday
12.00am – South Africa Vs Uruguay – Pretoria
05.00pm – Argentina Vs South Korea – Johannesburg (SC)
07.30pm – Greece Vs Nigeria – Bloemfontein

June 18 - Friday
12.00am – France Vs Mexico – Polokwane
05.00pm – Germany Vs Serbia – Port Elizabeth
07.30pm – Slovenia Vs USA – Johannesburg (Ellis)

June 19 - Saturday
12.00am – England Vs Algeria – Cape Town
05.00pm – Netherlands Vs Japan – Durban
07.30pm – Ghana Vs Australia – Rustenburg

June 20 - Sunday
12.00am – Cameroon Vs Denmark – Pretoria
05.00pm – Slovakia Vs Paraguay – Bloemfontein
07.30pm – Italy Vs New Zealand – Nelspruit

Football in India

The idea to write this post came into my mind when I was having a look at different groups of the World cup. I was really overwhelmed with a patriotic feeling and found myself wondering on the fact that, how is it possible that a country with population of over 1 Billion cannot produce 11 world class football player.

The primary reasons being:

• The first thing which struck me was the lack of infrastructure in our country. I tried to compare the number of cricket grounds to the number of football grounds present in our country and believe me the ratio was as low as it could get.
  
• Having left heartbroken from the government's side I turned towards the corporate India. I found out that the craze for football is immense in the corporate world. The Big Cats have already selected their sides and are backing them, but I was not able to find any answer as to why not even a single company is coming forward to sponsor our Indian Football team. I am not against Hockey or our Indian Hockey team but even they have got a loyal sponsor in form of Sahara, no matter how they perform.
  
• Then I turned towards the common man or the mango people or the aam aadmi of India and found that the following which cricket has in India is far more than that of football, but somehow I was not able to find good enough reasons to blame them because they buy what they see and at present the visibility of football in India is as low as it can get in a country like India.
• The improper functioning of the organization handling football in India is also a factor for such a pathetic condition of a beautiful game like football in our country. Consider the recent case of the Indian coach Bob Houghton, the organization did not had money to pay for the hike in salary requested by him.
  

But saying that Fifa will never be able to make into India and draw a significant amount of audience towards it will be totally wrong. Infact it has already started to form a grip on the Indian markets. Many Indian companies are launching their products in Fifa World cup instead of launching it long back in IPL season 3. The reason being that Fifa provides a global audience as against IPL.

Now I will be listing some of the factors which will play a significant role in laying a strong foundation for football in India. Who knows once we get a good enough fan base in our country we might be able to get a team who can qualify for the world cup.

• 20-20 cricket format has changed the preference of people to the shorter version of different games. Football is one such game which is getting an advantage due to this.
  
• Rise of sports marketing in India with the advent of large scale events like IPL. Who knows in future a major corporate house bids for the sponsorship of our football team. That day will change the way football is treated by the Indian masses.
• The Youth. Yes I am talking about you, me and the others who are in their late teens or early twenties. I have seen an immense following for football in these people. And I can bet you on this that they will act as a major driver for the upcoming of football in India. That time is not far when India will be having its own Ronney, Ronaldo and Messi.

There is hardly any reason as to why football will remain out of our focus for long. The driving factors are far more than the restraints and challenges faced by it. So lets wait and watch....

"With a little less than 36 hrs for the World cup to kick off, the excitement level in the Fifa fans is really worth seeing. I along with my team members at Brandistics will be supporting this mega event, with a wish in our hearts to see the Indian Flag flying high in the Fifa World Cup 2014."

"May the Best Team Wins" - (our apologies to all the die hard fans of different teams)

Stay tuned as Brandistics takes on the Fifa World Cup 2010...

Brand Ronaldo - CR9

CR9 is the trademark for brand Cristiano Ronaldo, an aggressive,talented,furious young footballer from Portugal who rose to be a 94 million euro player brand (as at brandistics we treat players as brands).A brand with such exuberant soccer skills and popularity across the world that he gained mainly with his association to world's best football clubs, an opportunity that few football talents achieve made him the most valuable player in the club history. This was exactly the thought put behind the unprecedented purchase done by Real President Florentino Perez ,his major objective was to increase the club's revenue and its brand value which could only be done by buying in the best of the existing brands and surely Ronaldo was one.

As a result, Real Madrid jumped up to no.2 from no.5 on the media brand list of advertisers (research done by University of Navarra's Economics, Sport and Intangibles Research Group who assigned 83 pts to Real Madrid based on their analysis, leading the list was Barcelona FC with 96.6 pts)and Real Madrid had taken over from Barcelona and Manchester United in some key markets, especially in South America, where the English club was no longer the leader in any country.Also,The sale of Ronaldo to Real had contributed to United losing their position of dominance in 13 out of 21 countries in which they were previously number one, including the United States, China, Brazil and Portugal.

The CR9 label has been created by Real Madrid for the promotional activities of the club as they position their brand asset in promotions pertaining aggression, youth , success, skills, and the hero who is now a soccer icon for a lot of markets around the world. This helps brands like Nike, Castrol and Pepe Jeans to position their products with this brand personality. Apart, from being a fierce footballer he is also very talked about amongst the girls so that helps brands like Emporio Armani and Clear Shampoo to position their products for the young machos. This has contributed to Real Madrid being regarded as the most profitable short term success in the media industry is and a valuable proposition to associate their brands to. Now,what else lies in the box will be revealed in the FIFA World Cup 2010 as it is a great opportunity for marketers to promote their products in the Portuguese markets, target the Portugal supporters worldwide and obviously the player's huge fan following.

And maybe this was the point in time from where it all begin.

"After we played Sporting last week the lads in the dressing room talked about him constantly, and on the plane back from the game they urged me to sign him. That's how highly they rated him!"
-Sir Alex Ferguson on C. Ronaldo

Athlete Endorsements and Effectiveness - What makes it?!

Both Ankit Chhabra and Sankalp Kohli, my partners in crime @Brandistics, had recently made a post on Brand Sachin. You must have read them, or if you have not then do that my clicking on their names. For once you read their posts, a few questions that beg to be asked comes to your mind. 

Is Brand Sachin one of its kind? Can Athlete Endorsements and the analysis behind a Sachin Tendulkar be extended to other athlete endorsements?

To answer the first question, you could have done that yourselves. Of course, Sachin is not one of his kind in this respect. All over the world, you could have had various athlete endorsers that have lent their celebrity status to a brand, that may or not be related to their sport. You have had footballers advertising Gatorade, an energy drink, and you have had Maria Sharapova endorsing a Power Shot. So, Sachin is definitely not one of this kind who has managed to advertise a Aviva Life Insurance in spite of the fact, that Sachin as a great sportsman has probably never really worried about his future income.

The answer to the second question is what grabs my attention the most. If Sachin is not one of his kind, and there are numerous other examples, than it allows to form a hypothesis that Brand Sachin could be extended to other athlete endorsements as well.

And so I decided to do some research. This is what I found out.

Sachin can be classified as a Multi Dimensional Endorser. Not only can Sachin advertise the products and services that are related to his sport, he can as effectively market the products that are seemingly not even remotely attached to his cricket. So what makes this effectiveness?

The fact is that for the Indian audiences Sachin is both, Attractive (some regard him as the same 16 year old cute kid) and Expert (well, he has been on the international cricket scene for 20 years straight) and research has proved that both this attractiveness and expertise is what is effective in Athlete Endorsements. An attractive athlete grabs the audience attention and his expertise helps them convince that the master must be right. 

Thus, the multiple dimensions that make Sachin a multi dimensional endorser can be broken down as follows:

• Trustworthiness 
• Expertise 
• Physical attractiveness 
• Familiarity 
• Likeability

Of course, they will never play an equal role in the case of all celebrities. For the role these dimensions play, you will have to come back to Brandistics. Till then...

Brand Sachin Tendulkar - I

We have spoken about how big brand sachin is in the world of sports marketing. There have been some remarkable brand associations with brand Sachin for the last 20 years of his career.We will talk about some of them in our coming posts for this week, and understanding the marketer's mindset and the content they produce to utilize this association to its full potential.


PEPSI

A cola brand is sold on the basis of impulse buying by the customer,which requires high brand recall.Now,what a global brand like Pepsi Co does is to optimize this brand recall by associating theor brands with some big stars around the world. In India, a cricket crazy nation Sachin Tendulkar is the best brand to associate with inorder to earn high brand recall.So, what did Pepsi do ; lets take you back to the famous worldcup 2003 campaign by Pepsi - "iski to gai" the perfect placement of famous Sachin-Warne rivalry that earned them huge revenues and great brand recall.





MRF

Yes, a tyre manufacturer that should position themselves with a F1 driver, chose brand Sachin. Why?? A product like tyre is reflected by its quality, durability and performance which are all synonymous with only one sportperson in the country who has consistently performed (performance) for years(durability) and is a genius(quality) at what he does. So, a perfect association that continued for long till last year, when the Genius MRF bat went out of sight of the cricket fans and got replaced with Adidas that promotes ST logo of UNEP (United Nations Environment Program)



AVIVA Life Insurance

This association in my perception is the best promotional campaign.Why ?? because by this campaign the marketers were able to give an insight of Sachin's personal life and how he is also the common parent who cares about his son's future and plans for his well being. A perfect depiction of Dad-son bonding in the content and how AVIVA insurance helps you plan your son's future. If Sachin does the planning even yo need do it and what better than AVIVA.

Sach(in) Ka Saamna

I still remember the first cricket bat bought by me was a bat having a MRF logo on it. Any guesses as to why I went for tht bat and not any other bat..... The reason is that at that time SACHIN used to play with MRF bat. This is one such example which shows how blindly we Indians follow Sachin, I can quote hundreds of other examples which will prove the power of Brand Sachin and the day Sachin scored 200 in an ODI he got the status of GOD by us and brand Sachin became an undisputed champion.

So the question arises that how can one value a brand like Sachin??? Well in an interview Sachin himself mentioned that he should be valued in runs and not in rupees, thus setting up a perfect example of the fact that he is true to his profession. Because the more the runs scored by him the more space will be acquired by him in the hearts of people. Big brands like Adidas started with some small endorsements with him (during the earlier stages of Sachin's career) and have move on to create private labels with him. This evolution of his brand association in a way reflects the role played by him in the Indian team.

The list here mentions various record deals associated with Sachin.

In order to give a more appropriate view of the power of brand Sachin we would like to present you with the stats of Share of Voice (SOV) for some of the Indian players (Share of voice is the percentage of advertising of one brand in a particular category as compared to other brands in the same category).

Most of us will be startled to know that the SOV for the brand Sachin gone below 30% just once or twice in his whole career (Its just AWSUM, a boon for the companies who are associated with this brand). Tendulkar very rarely gets associated with a negative brand, instead he always gets associated with niche products and premium brands an that is the reason why he is not above Dhoni.

According to us Brand Sachin will become even more powerful in the coming days the reason being current form of Sachin and coming up of Cricket World Cup.

With this we will end this post. We will soon be coming out with more such analysis for our readers.
So Stay tuned......

Performance and Popularity may not go hand in hand

Now, popularity in IPL 2010 is guaranteed. You know that, or you should! What I am here to tell you, that it will be guaranteed even if the teams never perform. Why am I saying this? Because I have empirical proof for this.

 

 

The above table that you can see is the points table that was created at the end of the league stage of IPL 2010, after the coverage of IPL 2010 at All Padded Up.

 

Now, look at the following table:

 

 

This table was created at All Padded Up through a poll, a poll in which 973 votes were cast for the most favoured team as determined by the readers of All Padded Up. The readers were allowed more than one vote in the poll. This was done so that the choice of the readers, and the popularity of the teams is not confined. This is the reason that the % figures add more than 100%.

The poll was conducted during the league stage of IPL 2010. Thus, the two tables were being created at the same time.

Thus, while the first table was a measure of performance of teams in IPL 2010, the second table is a measure of popularity.

The following points are something that we note:

• Kolkata Knight Riders is the most popular team, inspite of the fact that they were placed 6th in the performance team. In fact, the votes cast for KKR (68%) is higher than the votes cast for all the four top teams combined (59% combined).
• Delhi Dare Devils (Placed 5th in Performance table) has got more votes, that is more popular that 3 of the four teams that made to the semi finals of IPL 2010. Only Mumbai Indians have got more votes, among the top 4 teams.
• Mumbai Indians, which were the runners up in IPL 2010, must have lost the IPL 2010, but they were clear winners in terms of popularity beating the winners (34% as against 10%)
• Kings XI Punjab show that performance still matters. They are the last team in the points table, and have also received only 2% votes. That is because their performance was horrible right at the start of IPL 2010.

Thus, we come to the conclusion that while popularity is not confined to performance of the teams, performance of the teams does act as a parameter.

We are in the process of determining our own methodology of rating teams and brands. Wait for it!

Brand of the Week - Season II

Brandistics is back with a bang - we had an exciting reporting of marketing in IPL season #3. And, now we have new segment of posts highlighting the some of the biggest brands in the world of sports. Yes, indeed they are legendary players of their games but at the same time have been legends for the marketers across the world.

In these posts we will take up each of these players (brands) weekly and update you about how these players developed as a brand and how the big brands (companies) developed brand associations with these legends creating some historic campaigns in the world of advertising and promotions. These posts will also throw light on the various markets these brand associations target on and how they are able to convert it into success. And, then we leave it on our readers to decide weather these players are Brand Ambassadors or Brands themselves !!

So, we start the journey with Brand of the week - Season II exclusively only on Brandistics.

IPL: A Black Swan Event

Just a thought……Does IPL come under the umbrella of Black Swan Events? or Is it a scripted tournament, if yes than I must say it is better than even most of our Bollywood movies (to avoid any controversies I will not be talking about the latter here). Well according to me it is a Black Swan event the reason being:

IPL 1 Rajasthan Royals won the trophy. (At no point in time one could have said that they will emerge as winner)

Then in IPL 2 last year’s toppers came down and last year’s bottom two teams were put in the final.

The sudden shift of IPL from India to SA in season 2 (but everything was managed in such a way that it felt like they knew it was going to happen…U cannot make an event of such a big scale happen in about a few weeks time).

In IPL 3 when everything was going in favour of IPL, it was struck by a controversy (I think we all are well aware about it THE LALIT MODI CASE). Now the question in front of us is that, will IPL still enjoy the massive support it had managed to get in past 2 years?

And last but not the least: Will Lalit Modi regain his lost position? We here at Brandistics support Mr. Lalit Modi and hope to see him back in action. Because according to us: If IPL is ‘Manoranjan ka baap’ then Mr Modi is ‘IPL ka baap’. Well whatever the result may be we think it will again be a random one, which will come as a blow to us.

We have already seen in our previous posts that IPL stands way ahead among all the other sporting events. Now let us see how this greatness of IPL has lead to growth of various things with respect to India. They are:

Emergence of Brand India (As it is promoting itself as a game played by the Indian mass. Ad campaigns like Saare Jahan se Achcha are helping it to achieve the milestone)

Emergence of a business within cricket, thus making it a very lucrative option for Indian business houses who are ready to invest in sports.

At the game level, it has provided the young talented players of India, a stage to showcase their talent (I think this is the main reason why most of us are seeing cricket as a career).

It has promoted cricket as a commodity rather than a brand. This has brought down the emotional attachment of people with the game as a whole, but it is exploiting there emotion by targeting different states/parts of India by forming different teams representing different parts of India.

It has lead to the emergence of cricket as a competitor to football and basketball.

With this we will end this post. Stay tuned.....

Lalit Modi - Man behind the Brand IPL

Well everyone remembers the climax scene of the movie GURU ,where the witty businessman gets away with all charges just by the dialogues and the thought that whatever this man is doing is for the betterment of the country as a whole. But, this is no real life. Not in the case of, Mr. Lalit Modi the man who idealized the brand IPL and has worked diligently for 5 years now to make it to the list of most innovative global brands.

Lalit Modi, a great visionary who rose from the backdrop of his bad college days, to be a part of around 5 businesses that also include the mega-brand IPL has been asked to clear his image of all charges in the governing council meeting of the BCCI. This is what politics does to some bright careers in business. Personally, (being a bit positive and with all respect that I have for the brilliant mind in Lalit Modi) I think that though the man is minting money, so are the other business houses in India - now majorly because he went against the government to hold IPL out of India the last season in South Africa, does not allow everyone to fire all guns at him. He surely is involved in the charges raised on him, but I would list some brilliance of the man that cannot be overshadowed by the criticism he receives.

• The vision to take IPL global through international partnerships with Google-Youtube.
• His strategy to keep the IPL alive even after the season by organizing international off season matches to keep the audience engaged and boost the brand recall of IPL.
• The inspiration that he imbibed in every youngster in India who dreams to be the next generation Sachin Tendulkar,Kapil Dev or a Saurav Ganguly. He provided the platform for players like Asnodkar, R. Khan who could not even dream of earning such huge sums from their cricketing abilities. IPL inspired them to believe in themselves and put in their hard work so that they get the chance to play for their nation and this dream has been realized by players like Manpreet Gony, Murali Vijay, Ravinder Jadeja who have got their bright chances.
• Lalit Modi provided us the ultimate product mix of Cricket + Bollywood which has no other match in terms of entertainment value delivered.
• And, ultimately to take on the other commercial sport events of the west like the American Baseball , the English Premier League or may be other soccer leagues in the Europe. As, the growth rate of IPL in the sports industry clearly poses a major threat to these leagues in the coming future. So, he is making India shine on the world map as ultimately it is the INDIAN premier league and an INDIAN running it successfully for the last year( which has now been acknowledged by all management thinkers worldwide).

Yes, the ethics are necessary in the business you do - but such an attitude by the government raises questions on the sustainability of such brilliant innovations. The kind of environment that has now been created by the government with their "media partners" surely leads to degradation of the brand and the vision of the man seems to be all dark.

To end up probably my last post of this IPL season, I would quote Sachin on his 37th birthday. Probably, the only hope who will save this commercialization of cricket through hi true cricketing skills.
Sachin in a recent interview said -

"At the end of the day the competitiveness on the field is what the audience want to see, what happens off the field doesn't effect the cricket on the field and Indian cricket is strong enough to cross all these hurdles".

It is also true that no such controversies can ever stop an IPL fan to watch the master or any of their favorite player play on the field.

3 M’s of IPL

If you want to rate a brand, you do it on the basis of the value it fetches. What do you think is the brand value of IPL.... No idea... So let me put this like this... The recent bidding values for the new teams (Pune and Kochi) touched $700 million mark, which was almost at par with the one whole Manchester Untied team. Apart from it, IPL also enjoys a TV rating which constantly extends 4. No doubt IPL has arrived, and it is posing a threat on NBA and NFL.

According to us, the main reason for the success of IPL is the 3 M’s which it follows. A detailed description about them is given below:

Match Format:

IPL offers its audience a short and enjoying 20 over format cricket popularly known as T20. This formula of Modi, of coupling cricket with drama, emotion and above all bollywood (and other celebrities) has made it more of a family affair thus taking away the TRP’s of the family Saas/Bahu serials. The fact that this format fits into the Indian style of living also helps it to gain the viewership.

Money:

The Auctioning of players, the selling of Team ownerships, selling of tickets, Sponsorships price, broadcasting rights everything involves money. And why not IPL is here to make money. This factor has also contributed in adding a huge amount of fan following to it. (I recently got a goodie bag from KKR, just because I clicked on some of their adds and answered some stupid questions... Ppl or rather sponsors are throwing out money in IPL, so someone has to be there to catch it). This act of giving gifts to the audiences is really helping it grow exponentially (and specially in a country like India where people are crazy about the gifts).

Marketing: IPL is using every kind of marketing strategy from traditional medium to latest social media tactics. You name it and they have it. So let’s try to list some of them:

(Note: we are specifically dealing with the latest marketing activities adopted by them)

The collaboration with Youtube to stream the videos

Coming out with an official ipl website

Wikipedia telling the people about IPL

 

IPL coming out with face book fan page for its viewers.


IPL YouTube Social Media Promotion Banner Ads

IPL Cricket Fan Club Website and blogs like All Padded Up

Orkut has come out with a doodle for IPL

All the above mentioned promotional schemes followed by IPL are online in nature. We covered this here so as to lay a backgound for Viral Marketing postwhich will be soon following this post. So stay tuned.

Brand Deccan Chargers - Positioning

The last time we talked about Positioning of a brand, it was for the KKR brand. It was the team that had won the wooden spoon in IPL 2009 tournament and still continues to be a big brand. But this line of thought brought us to another big brand, that of DC or Deccan Chargers who have the dubious distinction of paving the way for KKR by winning the wooden spoon in IPL 2008.

But the way they position themselves is a lot different.

They do not have a glamorous owner and they are not associated with a glamorous brand ambassador. Not surprisingly, their brand valuation has been lower than most other teams.

In the first IPL, DC were the star studded, being positioned as such, considering it made the costly purchase in Andrew Symonds and boasted of the presence of hard hitters in Gibbs, Afridi and Gilchrist apart from Symonds. In the initial years, the brand was more focussed on individual players and not the team.

Deccan Chargers' latest ads, on the other hand, be it McDowells or Idea, show it as a team of friends who play together and win together. In the parlance of brand positioning, it tells us the following three things:

• Deccan Chargers win in IPL 2009 did not do much for its individual players, but created a distinct team identity.
• There is no single player in the team that can position the team brand on its own.
• It is the only brand which has got foreign players which act as better brand ambassadors than their Indian counterparts. However, these foreign players can never carry an ad alone in the Indian waters.

We believe that Deccan Chargers have a lot of work to do with regards to their brand, and not just on the field. May be, the next time we sit down to evaluate them, they will have worked harder as a team and make a turnaround like they did from IPL 2008 to IPL 2009.

Deccan Chargers - The Brand for The Week

We started with the brand leader in IPL- Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and now we discuss the brands relatively lower in the valuation table

The Deccan Chargers (Hyderabad Team)

The DC was regarded the best team on paper after the first auctions, attracting a lot more followers with a legendary lot of international hitters - Adam Gilchrist, Shahid Afridi, Herschelle Gibbs, Andrew Symonds, and others. But, gave a lackluster performance in the first season, which failed not only the cricket strategies but also the branding strategies.

The team Deccan Chargers, in the first season was placed as a performance oriented team with the best team players that were the major brand equity of the team. A blistering hitting by these top of the league hitters was what got people excited about the brand. At the same time the owners Deccan Chronicle Holdings Ltd are not a well known brand by themselves.This all failed and thus called for a major marketing step up by the brand. The facts say that :-

Owners:	Deccan Chronicle Holdings Ltd.
Franchisee Fee:	US $107.01 mn
Sponsorships and Brand Associations	Idea,Puma,Odyssey,Kingfisher,McDowell's,Pepsi,92.7 FM
Income in Sponsorships (2008 and 2009)	Rs. 70 crore.
Income in Central Pool	Rs. 111.5 crore
Eyeball Factor	The foreign hitters - Gilly,Symonds,Gibbs,Afridi
Team Logo

Source : livemint.com

Now, in the last 2 seasons still the brand has concentrated more on performance, with no major steps in adding to their brand value. There have been no glamour, no controversies and not much of marketing tools applied by the owners - probably the team's performance spoke for it in the last season by winning the IPL and in IPL-3 they rocketed to semis with consecutive wins.So, wonder what the Deccan Chargers' vision to earn profits because its just not cricket, afterall its sports marketing and we at brandistics tell you this week ,how the Deccan Chargers have still developed as a brand.

Positioning IPL

Ok..... let me start this post with a question....What is the first thing which comes to your mind when an advertisement says: “We’re number two; we try harder”? Yes we think of only one company that is AVIS. This advertising campaign made us forget all about the number 1 company in that field that is Hertz, and all our focus shifted to Avis which positioned itself as a number 2 and promised to work harder so as to satisfy us.

Positioning has now become a process by which marketers try to create a distinct image in the minds of the prospect for its product, brand or organization. We will not be wrong if we say that Positioning is a game which companies play in the today’s me-too market place. Before the launch of IPL the only thing which would have been in the mind of Mr. Modi would have been that how to position this event in the mind of people of India.

So in 2008 Max came up with a wonderful concept in the form of an advertisement which placed IPL as “Manoranjan Ka Baap”. The idea here was to show that the IPL was better than anything and everything which was in existence at that time. It was a pure source of entertainment for the audience and had everything in it drama, action, emotion etc. All in all it was like a 3 hr blockbuster movie which could get audience bounded to their seats.
So looking at the facts mentioned above I would like to give this advertisement a mighty 8 out of 10. Because it left no stones unturned to seek the attention of the audiences and made the event a true hit.

Then in 2009 Max came up with a 60 second commercial which was a series of shots which showed different people from all over the country doing the same thing at the same time. In the first shot we saw, many people are sitting in a park, reading the newspaper and turning the pages of it at the same time. In the second shot cooks in a restaurant twirl rotis in the air at the same time. In the third shot, a class room is full of kids and all ask for permission to go to the washroom at the same time. Then we see people at Mumbai’s VT station are hailing a taxi at the same time. Then a final voice is heard which says – ‘Ek desh ek junoon, DLF IPL sirf MAX par’. This advertisement was a true classic because this created a binding between the people of India and IPL, which was being projected as an Indian entertainment event (the significance of this advertisement also increases because this was the year when the venue of IPL was shifted to SA due to security concerns, so coming up with such a concept of promoting an event as a nations event was wonderful).
I would like to give this advertisement 9 out of 10 because this was successful in holding the Indian audience’s attention even though the event was shifted to South Africa in a limited span of time. And hadn’t this commercial been successful the whole existence of IPL could have been under a major threat because of a simple fact no audience means no sponsors.

Then finally we come to this year’s IPL which is again back with an interesting commercial which says – “Saare Jahan Se Achcha Hindustan Humara” which shows captains of different teams standing in a stadium.
This ad campaign acted as a medium to get IPL back to India and position it in the mind of Indian audience as an event which is truly Indian in nature. The background music of the ad further exploited the patriotism of Indian population. So I would like to give this ad campaign a 8 out of 10 because of the wonderful concept of clubbing an ad with the nations tune of “Sare Jahan Se Achcha”.

With this we end this post of how did IPL positioned itself amongst the Indian mass. Stay tuned....

Innovative IPL

Any guesses as to what is the biggest mantra for this mind-boggling success of IPL is..... Well according to us it is....”Jo Dikhta Hai Wo Bikta Hai “. It is well said that “Nothing succeeds like SUCCESS!” No matter where (we are talking about the change of venues from India to SA), no matter rain or shine (difficulties faced in SA) the IPL has been a tournament to watch. The major factor contributing in the success of this tournament is that it has been successful in exploiting the EMOTIONS of us the INDIANS (For whom Sachin is no less than a GOD and cricket is a religion).

Strategy, Marketing, Advertising..... You name it and IPL has it for you! With this post we will be analysing the strategy being followed by IPL so as to promote the entities related to it and the event itself.

When it comes to strategies, a company can follow one of the two ways:

Ø To do something innovative which gives them the first movers advantage (Such companies are visionary in nature and comes up with the things which are totally new to the world, we will not be wrong if we call such companies to be CRAZY)

Ø To blindly follow a strategy which is already tried and tested but others present in the industry. (Companies following such strategies are traditional in nature and are adamant to any kind of change)

IPL according to us is following an innovative strategy wherein the different entities involved in it (broadcasters, team franchises etc) are very cleverly selling off their rights and other publicity instruments to the sponsors so as to get a greater return on their investment (and why not you get such an opportunity once in a blue moon). Our previous article Related Rights of Broadcasters – IPL threw some light on how the broadcasters are selling of their rights to gain maximum profits. Teams like Kolkatta Knight Riders are becoming the first choice of the sponsors because endorsing such a team provides them with two of the biggest celebrities of India: The Dada of Bengal and The undisputed King of the Bollywood at the price of one brand in the form of Knight Riders.

In order to understand the attractiveness of IPL from the sponsor’s point of view or rather the people who are pumping in money in it let us do a SWOT analysis of IPL.

To end with we can say that IPL and innovation are going hand in hand at present. New and new strategies are being employed by the different entities involved in it so as to get more and more return on their investment.

Related Rights of Broadcasters - IPL

Since the time IPL has started everyone is benefitting from it. The team franchises, team squad, team members, boards governing the event, franchise owners, broadcasters etc. This post will be more inclined towards the profits which are being made by the broadcasters and the related rights which they posses on the broadcasting of an event (which in our case is IPL). Coming as a surprise to many of us IPL became the first sporting event to be broadcasted by the popular video sharing website Youtube. As per the UK-based brand consultancy, Brand Finance Indian Premier League’s brand value is estimated to be around $4.13 billion (which comes out to be Rs. 18,000 crore) in 2010. If we rate IPL on the basis of team salaries then it takes away the second slot, next only to NBA league.

Now let us have a look at this Mecca of Marketers from the broadcaster’s point of view. The rights of the broadcaster are very important in relation to the sports program. These rights provide them with the exclusive license to broadcast the sporting event of which the rights have been assigned to them, thus making the overall offer of providing a large sum of money in advance to get the related rights of the event look attractive and lucrative.

For IPL the global broadcasting rights were given to a consortium of India’s Sony Entertainment Television network and Singapore based World Sport Group. The duration of this deal was 10 years and its cost was $1.026 billion. Later due to a dispute between the Sony/WSG and IPL the price of the deal was raised almost by two times to Rs 8,200 crore for duration of 9 years. But this was not the end of the road for Sony/WSG, they further resold their broadcasting rights to other companies thus getting in some margins for themselves. They kept broadcasting rights of India with them (because of the reason well known to all). Below is the summary of broadcasting rights around the world.

WINNING BIDDER	REGIONAL BROADCAST RIGHTS
Sony/World Sport Group	India
ONE HD	Australia
Spy Network Television	New Zealand
GEO Super	Pakistan
SportsMax	Caribbean
ITV	UK
Astro	Malaysia
PCCW	Hong Kong
Star Hub	Singapore

IPL as a tournament has been very creative in giving its broadcasting rights. In no time companies will be coming up with the new concepts of 5 minute delayed rights, 10 minute delayed rights etc. Already such an instance has happened in UK. Where ITV holds the right of broadcasting both on TV and on the internet and Youtube also is broadcastin but with a 5 minute delay.

So our recommendations to all the marketers will be that they must staytuned to this mega event of IPL as it introduces new concepts of promoting as event as a brand.