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......

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.

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.

IPL makes it miserable for the TV industry

I would like to start my post with Lalit Modi’s statement on 24^th March 2010

“IPL will do billion dollar business this year”

And I was not shocked as this is what I have been highlighting in my previous posts; but the transition has been huge this year as compared to last year’s revenue of $450 million. So, the new ideas have been received well by the audience.

These new ideas have surely made it miserable for our very own primetime soap oper

as. This time, statistics will speak more than me.

• There has been a decline of 11 per cent in the share of general entertainment channels in the second week of the IPL telecast.So, some alarming signs for the TV industry and with around 30 days more to go for the season, the coming month is going to disturb them more.

• The opening match between Deccan Chargers and Kolkata Knight Riders in IPL3 recorded an average TVR of 7.0(C&S 4+ yrs) season, held in South Africa, the opening match recorded a TVR of 5.6 and 7.2 for both panels respectively. Though, it has not beaten the first season yet.

• The first match this season clocked 45 minutes in ad volumes, four minutes higher than that of the opening day of IPL-1 and IPL-2.

• The first 3 days of IPL3 have earned an avg. TVR of 7.0.
  

The share of Hindi movie channels has seen a rise of 42 per cent, owing to the telecast of IPL on SET Max, a movie channel.

So, basically with IPL Set Max has been topping the TVR charts; just have a look :

Click on the image to enlarge.

The major attractions this season so far have been:

• The IPL’s ‘Back in India’ ad campaign – because cricket does not excite us Indians, until there is stadium noise dubbing the TV commentary and backing it stars with roars of Sachin!!.... Sachin!! Sehwag!!.... Sehwag!!

• The hype of the Mongoose Bat, this has made the sport special. With special gears only made for IPL and you get to watch them exclusively in IPL.

• The new venues for matches (namely, Ahmedabad, Cuttuck, Nagpur, Dharamshala) that have been added, have further nationalized the game and have attracted more audience which is no more restricted to only the parent venues.

• Lastly, Sachin Tendulkar’s awesome form. Now , this is something that stops India when Sachin is on 99 and even world leaders have something to say on this:

I dont know about cricket but still I watch cricket to see sachin's play. Not because I love his play, its because to know the reason why my country"s production reduced to 50%, when he is in batting – B. H. OBAMA, President of United States of America

This is just the trailer, picture to abhi baaki hai mere dost. Next year with 2 new teams Team PUNE and Team COCHI there will be 10 teams with 34 more matches, which might be extending the suffering period to about 20 more days. So, the horrifying part for other channels awaits.