Tags:
Journalism of Courage
quot;It8217;s a clear day with conditions just right for a terrific match. Now here is Videocon coming in to bowl. It8217;s a good ball, full length, but it doesn8217;t slip through the defences of the Indian consumer8230; He stands there quite unimpressed. Now there8217;s a change of bowling and it8217;s Aiwa8217;s turn with the ball. This time Aiwa bowls a real flighted juicy offer. You can make out the consumer-batsman really opening his eyes wide at this offering. Sure enough, he8217;s really tempted by this great delivery. He steps down the pitch, takes out his wallet and takes out his money. Meanwhile out there at the other match Pepsi is playing to a really good gameplan8230;quot;Now we all know how cricket is played. It8217;s played with eleven fielders, two batsmen, two bats and one ball. However, that8217;s not the end of the story. The Big Brands play cricket with a whole different set of equipment 8212; they use commercials, press ads, special offers and crores of rupees.
First let me start off by answering the laconic question thateveryone asked me before the World Cup. They asked: 8220;Yaar, why all this fuss over the World Cup, what realistic chance does India have to reach the semi-finals let alone win? They8217;ll be lucky if they make it into the super six.8221; People who ask this are missing one important point. The bigness of the World Cup or the excitement of it does not create the advertising. It8217;s the other way around. The advertisers create the World Cup. Just as the gift and cards people create8217; Valentine8217;s Day. And just the way the hotels create the hype of the new year.
Secondly, let me answer another question that many people ask me 8212; 8220;how come during watching the cricket matches, we see the same commercials again and again?8221; Well, mostly the reason for that is that there was a minimum quantum of expenditure needed if you wanted to advertise with the World Cup on TV. In the case of Star Sports the figure was Rs.1.25 crore.
If as a brand you didn8217;t have one and a quarter to spend in 30-odd days, you were out of the World Cup before it began. Thus instead of many small advertisers you had a handful of larger ones, running their commercials again and again. For those interested in some kind of estimate of expenditure for the World Cup 8212; the figure for TV advertising is Rs 80 crore-plus, and for press about half that.
In fact, it is for this reason that a lot of advertisers deliberately chose to stay out of the World Cup. Rather than being drowned out by all the hype, they have tapered off the advertising, andplan to start it once the World Cup hoopla8217; is over.
Of course this doesn8217;t mean that the World Cup isn8217;t happening in advertising terms. Today you can eat8217; the World Cup because half the hotels have bat shaped menus and cricket named dishes. You can shave8217; the World Cup, because so many blades have special cricket offers. You can dance8217; the World Cup, with all the discos running special promos. Now let8217;s take a glance at the winners and losers of World Cup.
And here I8217;m not talking about South Africa vs Pakistan but rather about one brand vs the others. In the Coke vs Pepsi match, which is inevitable because one of them could afford to be left out, the winner was definitely Pepsi.
Coke had nothing in it8217;s armour to match the Sachin-Shah Rukh film shot so well by my friend Prahalad Kakkar, who has since been asked to do a commercial by Pepsi, New York. Karishma tried her best but I would imagine judging by my son8217;s reaction the Pepsi double star ad was the best loved one of them all.
I wouldaward the runner-up prize to Maruti. The only other thing that drives the nation8217; series used cricket in such a lovely way. After all, it is such an intrinsic part of Indian life. Which of us hasn8217;t spun8217; a tomato at home, or hit8217; an extra cover drive as we walk along. Bajaj 8212; the official carrier of the Indian cricket fan 8212; had a really intelligent thought but were slightly less subtle than the Maruti ones.
The big losers, I think, were the white goods 8212; the TVs, washing machines etc. LG, I feel, played the most boring innings of the World Cup 8212; yawn, yawn. In the Press, however, the winner was definitely AIWA. People may have raised their eyebrows at their Rs 2 per Indian run8217; offer, but the whole country was discussing it. And when that happens you know you8217;ve got a success, in sheer brand recall. Videocon too had an interesting twist with choosing a World Cup 11.8217;
I think the point to note is that it8217;s not enough to advertise during the World Cup. You can still be forgotten. The point is howcan you use the World Cup differently. Do you have a creative that is very humorous and different? Do you have a promotion that8217;s very imaginative? Are you able to use cricket and yet be unique? Can you more or less guess how everyone else is going about it, and then choose to do something that stands apart?
In many ways this ties in with the way the World Cup itself is played. The teams who stuck to their old formulas and didn8217;t come up with anything new, didn8217;t get very far. A prime example of this is Sri Lanka. On the other hand, teams who had studied their opposition well and came in with a powerful and thorough approach seem to be carrying the day. A prime example of this is South Africa.
So which advertising team8217; studied the pitch8217; better? Which advertising team studied the conditions in depth to come up with a gameplan that could beat the opposition? In the answers to these questions lies the true winner of the advertising8217; World Cup.
The author is National Creative Director, JointCommunication Asia Pacific Pvt Ltd.
His email: kullardel2.vsnl.net
