The CWG Ads You Did Not See

Did the event miss out on cool promotions? Marketers think so.

Did the event miss out on cool promotions? Marketers think so.

We prepared briefs for around 600 ad campaigns8230;only eight have seen the light of day, says Ashutosh Sharma,chief operating officer,Mercantile Advertising,one of the three advertising agencies hired by the Commonwealth Games CWG Organising Committee OC two and a half years ago to build buzz around the Games. They have squandered a rare opportunity, says Sharma. It was an opportunity to promote Brand India,to build a connect between people and sports other than cricket,and an opportunity to salvage their image.

It is rare to hear ad agencies crib about the clients on their roster; nobody wants to burn bridges in an industry of cut-throat competition. CWG,however,has been an unusual client. Sharmas counterparts from other two agencies JWT and Quantum Communications share his despondence. The marketing and branding initiatives were extremely disappointing, says Brajesh Shanker,director,Quantum.

CWG had a decent marketing budget. According to Priya Paul Singh,additional director-general,communications,CWG had budgeted Rs 30 crore for marketing communications; of this,Rs 5 crore each was allocated for TV and print advertising. But the ad agencies involved say that the CWG did not spend more than Rs 4-5 crore on the ad campaigns.

Though the performance of Indian athletes has been a success,and the opening ceremony and the conviviality during the Games were pleasant surprises,the CWG branding and advertising got a thumbs-down from the marketing fraternity. The campaigns were bereft of stars. They knew about the event seven years ago. There was ample time to make campaigns with star athletes from participating countries. Bollywood stars and other celebrities could also have been roped in, says Prathap Suthan,national creative director,Cheil Worldwide,an advertising agency that handles brands such as Samsung. What we got instead were bland messages from largely unknown people mostly CWG officials keen to promote themselves talking down to the audience, he says.

Good advertising could have been used to mitigate the damage from the negative publicity the Games endured before they began. A senior executive of JWT says that CWG advertising was more off-putting than inviting. There was no effort to build bonhomie around the countrys largest sporting event so far. If at all,it was done by individual stakeholders such as tourism departments or cultural agencies on their own, says a JWT executive who was part of the CWG advertising team.

High-decibel advertising,promotions and efforts to build hype are an inherent part of sporting events but CWG authorities had no vision on this front, says Sharma of Mercantile Advertising.