Relay Worldwide is a leadership initiative in sports: Ravi Kiran, MD, Starcom West/South

As a medium to promote one's brands, sports or sporting activities, barring the national passion of cricket, have never really been on a marketer's agenda. Of the Rs 350-crore invested annually in sports in India, 56 per cent, that is, Rs 170 crore is spent in buying spots on television-friendly games and tournaments with cricket matches featuring India walking away with 90 per cent of the spends. Signage, endorsements, syndication of newspaper columns and allied activities comprise the rest of the pie with the break-up as follows: Endorsements - 16 per cent or Rs 50 crore, syndication - 8 per cent or Rs 25 crore, signage - 7 per cent or Rs 20 crore and others - 13 per cent or Rs 40 crore.

With such a lopsided investment in sports, Starcom MediaVest Group clearly sees an opportunity to galvanise the business and convert it into a "mainstream medium" with the launch of Relay Worldwide, India's first sports agency, next month. "It is a leadership initiative," states Ravi Kiran, managing director, Starcom West/South.

According to Kiran, Relay Worldwide, will function as an intermediary evaluating frameworks and creating decision-making models to help advertisers get greater bang for the buck. "We will not create content," explains Kiran. "Our commitment is to the brand and the client." To this end, Relay Worldwide will develop sports marketing strategies including tournament sponsorships, endorsements, clinics, sales promotion, trade motivation programmes, creating ownable media properties, merchandising, syndication and broadcast, creation of decision-making frameworks, audit and evaluation systems, creation of new products and supervision of implementation.

The aim quite clearly is to enable marketers to "leverage the full potential of sports as a medium". "Over the years, general interest in sports has been growing and sportspeople too are doing well, internationally. However, due to the lack of a proper framework, clients are at a loss as to how to evaluate the monies invested in sports. We see ourselves doing a lot of evangelical work to convince various constituencies to join hands in our endeavour to convert sports into a mainstream medium," says Kiran

The group has identified eight such touch points, which need to be tapped to spur the industry into action. These include mass media owners, sports journalists and commentators, current players, ex-players, sports associations, research agencies, sports management companies and sports academies.

Pranay Anthwal, an MBA from Mumbai University with a decade in sales, business development and strategy in companies such as DHL Worldwide Express and Times of India, has been appointed as the group head of Relay Worldwide. He will work in close association with Manish Porwal, general manager, investment and new initiatives, Starcom, to develop Relay into a separate profit centre.

Starcom MediaVest has also commissioned market research outfit Hansa Research Group to provide information on the popularity of Indian sportspeople (cricketing and non-cricketing personalities will be evaluated separately) on the basis of demographics and geography, every month. This information will be used in gauging the appeal of different sports stars helping Relay base some key decisions. "We will also syndicate the information to newspapers," says Kiran.

The agency has eight products under incubation with plans to approach advertisers for the same. "Our partnership formation process is underway and we are talking to at least half a dozen potential organisations in the area of public relations, event implementation, programming and television broadcast," indicates Kiran. © 2003 agencyfaqs!