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Less than 5 per cent of the 1,000 or so movies produced every year attain blockbuster status and the IPL matches will be no different. Marketers will have to think hard because there are no right answers
Bollywood has a newfound competitor in the Indian Premier League that’s just been announced. A lot has been written about the deep pockets, the vulgar display of wealth, the lack of cricketing logic in the bidding process, how cricket has lost out to marketing might, and so on. The imperatives of all this analysis are futile in my book as there is something called passion that renders all these logical variables null and void.
Three hours of cricketing fun with a winner. It’s going to be exactly like watching a matinee show with all the necessary ingredients – action, emotion, passion, drama… But will there also be an item number? Sure, there will be. All the antics done by the players, or the controversy created, will qualify to create copy the next day. So, now, cricket will also give reality shows a run for their money
Making sense of this business
The rule of every business is to make money and this is done by acquiring customers and keeping them happy so that they are loyal to your brand. Nobody does business for charity. So, let’s do a check on how many kinds of customers the IPL could acquire and how many it will find tough to convince. To do this, I think it would be imperative to check the benchmarks one would assess before partnering and the side-effects of this emerging genre
How many will watch and why
Gopinath Menon |
Each question will have its answers, but the pattern of the answers will be identical. A bunch of players and the passion for the team that the players bring along is always the reason. This is where the first hurdle lies for the IPL. When there is a team which has players from four or five different countries, how can the chemistry be magical from day one?
Players who have been competing with each other till now will find it a little difficult to bond together, no matter how professional they are, as the West Indies vs Rest of the World games in the 1970s and the recent Australia vs Rest of the World matches show. It is natural for these lacunae to surface as players will continue to outdo each other silently; in the process, the sport will move to second place. This will not be good for the newly defined entertainment genre. It is exactly this problem that will see marketers exercising their mental faculties to fill up the stadium. If the stadium is not filled up, it will show in the marketing presence all around and within the stadium itself.
Implications for others
The genre needs deep pockets; hence, there would not be larger fence sitters than the early adopters. All the marketing companies who have used the sport will find it immensely difficult to abstain from participating. This will be the case even when the sport has been camouflaged as entertainment. Less than 5 per cent of the 1,000 or so movies produced every year attain blockbuster status and this new discipline will be no different. Marketers will have to think hard because there are no imminent quantitative right answers. All the answers flow from the gut and the wild desire there does not feed mouths.
All the big brands which will continue to patronise the IPL will need to borrow from other activities planned during the year. So, the marketing priorities will change and this might not make all brand managers happy. The entertainment channels and reality shows which have been showing fatigue as the audiences grow in maturity will be the hardest hit. The heads of ad sales of these companies will have to be innovative in their excuses for business shortfalls and this will result in more intense attrition rates in the television industry.
Lastly, the real connoisseur of the game will not be pleased and will find this new format revolting. This will be the affluent, 40 plus, high net worth individual and key opinion maker, who is the target for all premium, high end brands. He still gets turned on by white flannels and the copy book game and this affinity will not be good news for niche segment brands
The niche beneficiaries
There will be good news for a lot of people. All the eight teams will hire advertising and marketing professionals who will be responsible for branding the teams and also for creating craving and excitement for being brand loyal. This ongoing process will result in able and willing talent migrating from the advertising world at huge salaries. The shift in entitlements for a select few could be larger than the dotcom wave that happened in the late 1990s.
Advertising agencies will rejoice as all eight teams will require these skills and will hire independent advertising agencies. If the English Premier League story is anything to go by, it will also create new advertising heroes, and for this, advertising professionals will have to think beyond a print ad and a 30 second TV commercial and look at novel ways to touch consumers. An international tournament in this format is in the offing later this year and this could see advertising professionals laughing all the way to the bank, but not necessarily the brands.
Two kinds of companies
In my book, there always are two kinds of companies. The first kind are the companies that will find novel ways of how best to spend money and the second kind are companies who are always on the lookout of where all the money can be spent. The first set contains the ones who treat spends as investments, whereas the second set contains those who treat spends as expenditure. The former will drives sales and the latter will pursue salience, and salience does not feed in the immediate future. It’s the simple difference between being proactive and reactive and chances are that the IPL will find the favourites fighting over each other in the latter segment as willing partners. This should not surprise many as we all know that “talk does not cook the rice”.
(Gopinath Menon is senior vice-president, media, TBWA India.)