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T20 World Cup attracts a vast and more engaged audience, says CoinDCX’s Marketing Head
We spoke with Ramalingam Subramanian on the brand’s association with cricketing events, factors for partnering with WC T20, leveraging broadcast and more.
The long-awaited ICC World Cup T20 has finally kicked off after a delay of about 5 years. This has not just left the fans ecstatic but also the brand world seems to be riveted with the event. It is reported that the broadcaster has raked in over 1200 cr of ad revenue, a three-time jump in comparison to the previous edition. It has signed 16 sponsors including Byju's, Dream 11, Coca-Cola, Vimal, PhonePe, Havells, Netmeds, CoinDCX, JioMart, Skoda, Mondelez, Reliance Trends, Pernod, Upstox, Samsung and Cred.
To understand know more about such association, afaqs! spoke with Ramalingam Subramanian, head of brand, marketing and communications, CoinDCX on his insights on partnering with T20 World Cup and more.
With more and more emerging players in the crypto category, what was your inclination behind associating with the T20 World Cup on TV? How is live cricket association different from entertainment shows?
We’re at an awareness-creating stage - both as a brand and industry. And we have to be smart about awareness creation and audience targeting. In India, cricket is more than a sport; it's a religion, and we see a lot of potential in the country's underserved crypto-assets market. The cricket season attracts a vast audience from all throughout India. On cricket, we see a more engaged audience as compared to other genres.
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The T20 World Cup is massy and provides the required scale to a brand.Also, the T20 format drives more female viewership as compared to other formats. Our broadcast association was primarily to make crypto accessible and the mediums provides that exposure. The idea was also to normalise the crypto industry and remove the false notion of exclusivity.
Cricket is India's most popular sport, with millennial and Generation Z viewers glued to their televisions throughout matches. It will take some time for any other sports or brands to replace in this cricket frenzy nation
What’s your take on the role of the World Cup on TV in effecting positive outcomes in a brand’s marketing funnel? As a new advertiser looking to make a mark in an emerging category, how does the TV association with the T20 World Cup serve your brand building efforts?
With the T20 World Cupnot held last year, there is heightened expectation and hype building up to the competition, and broadcasters are forecasting a huge increase in overall ad expenditure, indicating a big festival season ad spend resurgence following a flat season last year.
During the T20 World Cup, brands are going to attract a lot of eyeballs from the viewers and the broadcast will have tremendous reach across age groups, gender and geographies which they will be able to sustain over a period of over 20 days. The World Cup has a massive reach which is the primary aim for the brand and to make sure that we reach out to everyone.
Associations like these are not just brand building but brand awareness as well. Broadcasting delivers high visibility and impact which is necessary for creating recall that can further help during performance marketing. It helps in building the necessary connection or bridge for other mediums and marketing programs.
CoinDCX has been associated with Live Cricket a number of times since its launch. How has it helped the brand distinctively in early-stage performance? What are some of your key success metrics at this point?
We started our larger association with IPL, ICC Test Championship and India-Sri Lanka T20 Cup. Through these partnerships, we’ve seen the conversation move from ‘our existence’ to ‘why us’. In terms of measurement, we’ve seen the impact in two parts: One is a broader targeting and increase in the number of eyeballs and second is the decrease in the cost of acquisition. Through these participations, we’ve seen the marketing funnel improving like signing up rates increasing, etc.
World Cup on TV has proven to be a highly engaging advertising platform because the whole nation is watching the same TVC at the same time and discussing it on social media because of this commonality. How does CoinDCX look at its creative performances objectively and also try to understand the social media world when its ads are live?
We produce our main content keeping broadcast in the mind but we also support it with a lot of parallel content running on social media. This helps us with our common narrative being communicated across platforms and to a wider audience. For example,as the primary TVC runs, we created engaging properties on social media like a Crypto ChampionsLeague where the audience could participate and win prizes. We also partnered with Fandom where we could engage with fan clubs of teams. These shoulder properties keep the communication rolling which further builds a continuous recall.
What's the recipe to make a campaign noticeable on TV, especially in terms of live cricket?
Crypto is a product that necessitates continual marketing to ensure that viewers comprehend it. Our campaign's main ingredients have always been education, awareness, and storytelling. The goal with our previous campaign #BitcoinLiyakya was to get people to think about Bitcoin as an investment class asset. We have been empowering investors to make safe & secure investments in popular crypto assets like Bitcoin since our inception in 2018.