Noise’s IPL association aims at expanding its smartwatch category

From Vodafone Zoozoos to Byju’s, Swiggy, Cred, the most memorable ads are usually released when the Indian Premier league (IPL) is on. Every year, the viewers are treated to a two-month-long ‘cricketainment’ that includes their favourite players.

The IPL has become a heady cocktail of money, glamour, entertainment and sports. It has also created the perfect marketing opportunity for brands.

To cash in on the opportunity, Noise, India’s leading connected lifestyle tech brand, signed start cricketer Virat Kohli as its ambassador in December 2022.

“We look at sports and fitness together. There have been many legendary cricketers in the Indian team. Kohli has led from the front and made India win on foreign shores. So, there’s a lot of value that he brings to the brand,” shares Gaurav Mehta, CMO, Noise.

With brands investing in the IPL big time this year, “A fairly large chunk of our FY 2024 investment budgets, is going into the IPL,” says Mehta.

To resonate with more audiences, Noise recently released a digital ad #SunoDilKaShor, featuring Kohli. In the campaign, Kohli talks about how the Noise smartwatch has his back and ensures that he stays on track, no matter what.

“We’re looking at the IPL, because of its large scale and our business objectives,” mentions Mehta.

The campaign is targeted towards individuals aged between 18 and 35 years. This is not the first year of the brand’s association with the IPL.

Through its latest campaign, the brand plans to expand its smartwatches category.

“Our objective is to make more and more people aware about smartwatches, as a category, and what it can do for them in their life,” reveals Mehta

Speaking on the consumer insights, he shares, “Within the first 7-8 days of the campaign’s release, we saw that people were getting more aware of smartwatches. The brand scores are trending upwards. The branded searches are also rising.”

Co-founded by two brothers, Amit and Gaurav Khatri from Gurugram, in 2014, Noise has become a notable gadget brand for smartwatches, taking on players like OnePlus, Fire-Boltt, realme, etc. It started out by selling smartphone cases, and later diversified into smart wearables and wireless headphones.

The wearable market in India saw around 47% year-over-year growth in 2022. According to an International Data Corporation (IDC) report, 100 million units were shipped in 2022. Smartwatch shipments in 2022 stood at over 30 million, growing by 151% since 2021. The report suggests that Noise led the smartwatches market, with a 27% share.

Noise Premier League

In addition to launching the campaign, the brand has also announced the Noise Premier League (NPL) 2023. Users can now play along, during the IPL matches, on the NoiseFit app, by predicting the winners and earning rewards.

The NPL will also make accomplishing one’s fitness goals more exciting, as users can guess the winners of matches, meet their step count goal, weekly fitness goals and much more, and be rewarded with thrilling prizes using Noise coins. The campaign will run through the IPL season.

“We’re constantly enabling users to optimise their fitness through new initiatives and innovation across wearables and NoiseFit apps. We’re sure that new age India will indulge in the experience and set a new fitness benchmark during the NPL,” says Mehta.

Noise will run its digital ads during the IPL across connected TVs and platforms, like Facebook, Google (YouTube), etc.

Industry trends

Smartwatches have become quite popular since the Covid-19 pandemic, as there is an increased awareness around keeping track of important health metrics such as heart rate and blood oxygen levels.

Noise launched it's first smartwatch almost three to five years back, "Earlier people used to complain a lot about quality, design and experience about this category." Now, this category has moved towards the lifestyle category, the trends have changed towards big emotional value attached to the product.

In addition, functionalities are also increasing as per Mehta, "Consumers in the past were not concerned about oxygen meters, but today this trend is increasing." The brand now has a health tracker, a sleep tracker, drinking water reminder, heartbeats and more, added to the category.

"How do we make a whole ecosystem around the smartwatch is something that we will see as an upcoming trend", shares Mehta.