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!

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...

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 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.

Brand Kolkata Knight Riders - Sponsorships

What is it about Kolkata Knight Riders, that despite the fact that the team has performed poorly in both the seasons, it has been able to garner sponsors, and a lot of them at that, at will?

What I mean here is that any corporate player (and these sponsors, all of them, are just corporate players at the end of the day) would wish to get associated with a brand that is a winner in its field. It is a basic rule which we call the "Implication by Association Rule (IBA)". This attitude of the corporate to get attached to a winning team is to send out a message to its audience that the corporate is a winning outfit as well.

But KKR has not been that, at least not in the past. So, what is it that gets corporate players, all market leaders in their own way, to sponsor a team that is not a leader in its field?

The answer lies in the table of this post. You remember the table of facts, don't you?!

Couldn't find it? Well, let me spell it for you then.

The answer is the first eyeball factor, given in the table. The answer is Shah Rukh Khan. No, IBA does not fail in the case of KKR, either. However, in the case of KKR, IBA is not signified by the association with the team, but with the owner of the team, who is a leader in his field of entertainment.

You don't agree with us? Figure this:

Nokia, Belmonte, Tag Heuer were associated with Shah Rukh Khan before KKR existed. Star Plus had an association with SRK from the KBC 3 times. Reebok got product placed in My Name is Khan (MNIK), a Hindi film released by Fox worldwide, as it got associated with SRK. Sprite, XXX and Lux Hosiery feature SRK in its advertisements and simply because they are associated with KKR. SRK needs to make an appearance on the advertisements to promote his own investment in the team of KKR. 

Yes, the team has got a load of sponsors. But aren't these players really getting associated with Shah Rukh Khan and that is about it?! You tell us.

Ankit Chabbra talks about Positioning of KKR brand in another post. Find out how KKR have positioned themselves.

Kolkata Knight Riders - The Brand for The Week

For those who are reading Brandistics would know, that Brandistics is the first Indian blog to treat players as brands, and teams as mother brands. Indian Premier League, by that analogy, would probably then become the grandfather brand of them all.

Yes, IPL is a huge brand name today, and Ankit Chabbra has told you that it is so, because it is the 22nd most innovative company in the world today. This company gives us some awesome entertainment, some brilliant cricket, a lot of glamour, and stars that become so, almost overnight.

But if there is something that IPL gives us, apart from all of this, that makes the marketers very excited is the 8 established brands other than itself that IPL brings along. Yes, I am talking about the already established 8 teams, which would soon be joined by 2 more (Pune and Kochi) from IPL 2011.

For the sake of KISS (Keep it short and simple), Brandistics here will be taking one brand a week, and talk about it from all perspectives. Of course, if there is a lot more that we wish to discuss about that particular brand, we could extend that brand to the next week too.

So, the Brand for the Week is:

Kolkata Knight Riders

The team hasn't had the best of runs in IPL 2008 and IPL 2009, and while the performance has been better in IPL 2010, it is certainly not enough for the side to be counted as one of the favorites.

But the side definitely is a favorite among the public, which makes it a favorite for the marketers. We know IPL is a Mecca for Marketers, and KKR is one of those most desired seats.

So, this week, we would be talking about what makes KKR such a strong brand, in spite (or because of, as they case might turn out to be) of poor performances on the field.

But before we get down to any of that, let us find out a few facts about the team.

Owners:	Red Chillies Entertainment Pvt. Ltd
Franchisee Fee:	US $75.09 mn
Sponsorships and Brand Associations	Nokia, Belmonte, Star Plus, Gitanjali Jewellers, Sprite, Boomer, Reebok, Bilt, Tag Heuer, PlanetM, Next, XXX Energy Drink, Lux Hosiery
Income in Sponsorships (2008 and 2009)	Rs. 125 crore.
Income in  Central Pool	Rs. 111 crore
Eyeball Factor	Shah Rukh Khan (Co-owner of the team) Sourav Ganguly (Captain for IPL 2008 and IPL 2010)
Team Logo

Data Courtesy: Live Mint

The facts are out of the way, our opinions will now hit you. Wait for our opinions and come back for the same. Till then....

I am Brandistics - I am All Padded Up's Baby

All Padded Up has been there forever. Since April 2008, to be precise. And cricket is what Ankit Poddar talks about at All Padded Up. With his experience at All Padded Up, he realized that cricket is a game of brands and cricketers are treated as brands. Of course, their statistics on the field play a major role in that. And so, I was born.

I am basically the baby of All Padded Up. I would be talking about cricket, that All Padded Up talks about, but from the perspective of brands and statistics and not just mere on field performances.

Of course, my parent in All Padded Up would be recommending you to me from time to time, and I hope the love and readership you have provided to my parent will be given to me as well.

So, I begin my journey!