Time to bat for other sports

I spent five years learning Economics and one of the few things I learnt was “In India agriculture is a gamble with the monsoon.” I could almost picture the lines of worry on the Indian farmer’s face as he squinted at the sky, more with hope than with any other emotion. I believe the Indian advertiser who bets big bucks on cricket telecasts like the World Cup is in a similar position.

That too is a gamble as everything depends on the Indian cricket team’s performance which has been inconsistent at times. When India does well the advertiser is smiling as that means fantastic TRPs and great ROI, and when it fails, it is doom and gloom.

The mother of all cups

Cricket means big bucks in India and the World Cup is the mother of all cups. Let’s not forget that India is the current holder of the Cricket World Cup. Nor should we forget the tremendous hype that Star Sports is capable of generating with its immense media clout and the slew of channels at its control. And yet, as the Indian cricket team sleepwalked through the Australia tour without winning a single game, the large advertiser empathised totally with the farmer and knew exactly how he felt in the face of a dicey monsoon for he had already bought time at exorbitant prices on World Cup Cricket.

The spadework, however, had been well done. India games were on Sundays and during the day, which would ensure ease of watching. The first game was against Pakistan and in case you didn’t watch the commercial, it features the hopeful Pakistani cricket fan, waiting anxiously, ready to burst crackers but just unable to do so as India won – again. As we all know now, India won by a mile and the ratings went through the roof. The next game was even bigger, the following Sunday, as it featured South Africa, one of the favourites. The build-up was phenomenal, featuring South Africans who, in another ad, condescendingly reminded us about the three previous encounters. Nearly 86,000 people wended their way to the MCG (80,000 of them Indians) and watched in disbelief and later ecstasy as India smashed South Africa! And so India’s merry ways continued with another win over UAE and a place at the top of the pool with interest, viewership and discussions around our famous World Cup campaign at an all-time high!

Now India has won all its six league games convincingly, leading us to believe that retaining the World Cup is eminently possible. So all is well, as we speak, with the Indian cricket team and the advertiser who has completely forgotten all his fears and is patting himself on the back for getting it right again. And yet, being the pragmatist I am, my mind always goes back to 2007 when we did not even make it past the first round.

But is all really well?

But is all really well with advertiser and advertising?

This brings me back to my famous refrain. Despite being cricket-mad it pains me to see the Indian advertiser’s absolute dependence on cricket. If it is not World Cup Cricket it seems some meaningless entertainment like the IPL. Let’s not forget too the inherent controversies that seem to dog the game. Match-fixing seems to rear its ugly head far too often for the liking of genuine cricket fans like me and in our darkest moments we wonder if we are wasting our time – and life – following this game with its attendant evils. The shenanigans of the BCCI, which seems worried about everything other than the game, is a constant source of disquiet and it needs the highest judicial authority in the country to guide this body.

How worrisome is that? If this is the state of mind that cricket lovers like you and me are experiencing, you can be sure that advertisers are even more acutely aware of the lack of choice when it comes to an interest that delivers a huge national audience across languages. There have been some attempts by trying to support and create interest in other sports such as hockey, football and even kabaddi. It is early days yet and while the signs are promising, there are miles to go.

Someone must bite the bullet

Having said that, I still think it is important for one advertiser or a few to realise that cricket cannot and should not hold them to ransom. They must continue to invest not only in other sports but also look at other interests. This leads me to what I believe is an important point. Indian youth is changing, by the moment. In fact, people in the metros don’t watch as much cricket as people in the smaller towns. Could not some specific programming be created that catches the fancy of Indian youth instead of waiting for some sports events to happen? Reality shows are probably boring today but someone did aKaun Banega Crorepati even if it was not the most original idea ever filmed. So what’s the next big idea?

I am sure it is not the IPL!

Brand IPL has seen it all

The Indian Premier League has been a hot bed for controversies right from the start. From one player slapping another to a owner getting banned from a stadium, players getting caught in rave parties to teams getting scrapped and now — cricketers getting caught in spot fixing — one can say that the brand IPL has seen the best and the worst of all.

Not surprisingly, these controversies have hit the brand equity of IPL. Advertisers and experts say that the brand needs to urgently take some measures to clean up its image, else the equity will further be dented.

“Incidents like this leads to loss of credibility. And this is not the first to hit IPL. Owners and organisers need to show it to the audience that they are making efforts to clean up the mess, else the opportunity to be a fast growing global brand will take a beating,” says Sridhar Ramanujan, CEO-Brand comm.

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Time the sponsors cracked the whip

Cricket is still the big thing and Pepsi knows that

Nothing, it appears, can slow the economic behemoth that the BCCI has become. Not falling television ratings, not terminated IPL teams, not alleged financial irregularities or a sluggish general economic climate. PepsiCo’s bid of Rs 396.8 crore to be the title sponsor of the IPL through 2017 almost doubles the value of the original deal with real estate firm DLF and gives the IPL a blue chip title sponsor that already has a long association with cricket.

When DLF decided not to renew their association with the Twenty20 tournament because the deal no longer made economic sense to them, it suggested the BCCI would be hard pressed to find a replacement willing to pay the kind of money they expected. The deal with Pepsi, however, underlines how strong the IPL brand has become and how it continues to attract big ticket sponsors even as companies tighten their belts.

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Sun TV and IPL: A bold step?

The Sun TV Network has won the bid for the Hyderabad franchise of IPL for the next five years, after the erstwhile owner Deccan Chronicle Holdings lost the rights recently. afaqs! explores what the deal brings to the table.

After a bitter battle which resulted in the termination of the Hyderabad franchise Deccan Chargers, owned by Deccan Chronicle Holding Ltd (DCHL), the franchise finally found a new owner, Sun TV Network, on October 25. The media company will have to pay Indian Premier League (IPL) Rs 85.05 crore per year for the next five years. Sun TV Network won the bid against PVP Ventures, which bid for Rs 69.03 crore per year.

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Time for a strategic break-out?

The IPL in its brief yet chequered history has claimed many firsts. One of them is the strategic time-out. This break which the cynic claimed was merely to sell advertising space had logic in its conceptualisation. Teams could huddle, strategise, motivate themselves and come back with renewed vigour. Leading credence to this theory was the fact that batting teams generally lost wickets in the first over after the break. Be that as it may be, the time has come for the governing body of IPL to step back strategically and consider the last few weeks and the learnings thereon to prepare for the future.

For, in a nutshell, this IPL has been like no other. Whether it has been the number of last-ball finishes, tweets by owners about the character of women, celebrities exchanging fisticuffs with security guards, players being suspended for spot fixing, team owners rushing out to remonstrate about umpiring decisions, or a number of prospective teams suddenly losing their way to enable the hitherto lacklustre Chennai Super Kings to make it to the play-off stages, decline in TRPs or a drastic reduction in the IPL's brand's value, you name it – every possible controversy has happened making one accept reluctantly that this has been a season like no other and for the sake of the IPL, one hopes that seasons like this don't happen again.

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Of fans and celebrities

Superstar power: Rajesh Khanna and director and ad man Balki shooting the Havells commercial.It takes courage to use a retired superstar to endorse a brand.

I used to live in Bombay, as that exciting city was called in the late Seventies in my bachelor days, and the star that people died for was Rajesh Khanna, whose famous hairstyle, ‘guru' shirts and trademark tilt of the head were forever etched in the minds and hearts of people. I remember an unsolicited tribute to his personality in a small hotel in Sion where, above the mirror, was a sticker that read, “We know you are Rajesh Khanna, but please don't comb your hair here.” Even in the city that spawned and led the “anti-Hindi agitation” Madras as Chennai was then called, his blockbuster movie Aradhana ran for 100 weeks in Little Anand! People like me who did not know a word of Hindi still hummed his songs hoping against hope that no one would ask us what we were singing. His fans were legion and would die for him. Well, newer, younger stars have taken his place and captured the imagination of today's youth just as much as Rajesh Khanna did three decades ago. One star has been replaced by several and Rajesh Khanna pretty much went into oblivion.

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Of a cute kid and a grumpy old man

Many years ago I remember reading about research that said Indian television viewers preferred the commercials that preceded and followed programmes to the actual programmes. Well, history repeats itself (I must quickly add, to a certain extent) as some of the commercials one gets to see on Indian television are vastly superior to the programmes it carries.

You will realise the truth of my statement if you happen to watch the pre-IPL match telecast (whatever it is called) featuring Navjot Singh Sidhu and the “new, improved” Harsha Bhogle, who must be paid per word as he normally speaks seven words when one should suffice. So, instead of using up valuable words on these people, let's talk about advertising that is either better or worse.

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Will IPL 5 be a damp squib?

Too much cricket is leading to fatigue, and falling viewership.

Deepavali used to be the highpoint of my childhood. Your importance was directly proportionate to the rubble of crackers in front of your house, and I used to spend several days and nights in anticipation of the cracker bursting, something that today's kids and even adults seem to have given up due to a variety of reasons. I remember, though, that often, thanks to the preceding heavy rain in the city, the crackers that we expected to make the most of fizzled out, much to our chagrin and embarrassment.

I am reminded of this as I see all the build-up to the IPL, whether it is the reams of coverage in daily newspapers, interviews with the Gilchrists and the Lehmanns of the world or news that Sachin Tendulkar has joined the Mumbai Indians training camp. Ads and radio spots are flooding the channels reminding people (as though they needed reminders) about the big event around the corner. What will be the fate of IPL 5, whose first match would have just been aired the night before you read this piece? I wish I knew but I can hazard a few guesses.

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Heroes, zeroes and wannabes!

The IPL auction, hits and misses may be a media event but the quality of the game is what will determine its success..

Serious advertisers and those who have an interest in the game should go by the shorter version of the game and by that I mean T20.

The quality of the game,and not the players' prices, will ultimately have an impact on the success of IPL. As for the World Cup, that's another piece of entertainment better approached (or not) with great deliberation. Seen here are Mumbai Indians team owner Nita Ambani at this month's IPL auction (right) and the glittering trophy for the upcoming Cricket World Cup.

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Sponsors in a spot

Match-fixing allegations enervate audiences, and marketers would do well to have alternative strategies in place..

There used to be a fairly banal script idea in the Tamil films that I used to see several years ago. See if this sounds familiar: There is a doting husband and a pretty wife with dubious morals. The husband reluctantly leaves his wife to go on a foreign trip and barely has he reached the airport before the wife gets her paramour into the house. The flight is cancelled for technical reasons (long live Air India) and the husband returns home, only to find his wife in a stranger's arms in his own bed. The poor man is devastated, loses reason, sees red and kills his wife. He goes to jail, becomes a misogynist and goes around wearing a shawl in the salubrious Tamil Nadu weather singing sad songs!

Sounds familiar, even ludicrous and only serves to confirm our already poor opinion about Tamil films, right? But there is nothing ludicrous about what happened in cricket recently with the Pakistani cricket team and with all the evidence of spot fixing that has been aired on every television channel and spewed forth on every Web site and newspaper. I am sure thousands of cricket lovers, me included, would empathise with the husband in the Tamil movie and feel he was not as weird as they thought he was initially, as now I can understand what people can do when they are let down badly by the people they love. I don't blame some of the Pakistani supporters for taking to the streets as they have been let down again by their beloved cricketers and even more by their administrators who still talk about “conspiracy theories”, even if they have been pushed to reluctantly suspending the three tainted players.

Spare a thought for me

I felt particularly aggrieved as, when match after match of boring cricket was happening in the sub-continent featuring some of our own stars, I chose to watch Pakistan take on Australia and England under the cloudy skies of the English summer and revelled at the way the Pakistanis made the ball talk, not knowing that a lot of the conversation was happening with shady characters from the betting world as well. Poor, unsuspecting me! It was singularly gratifying to watch the talented 18-year-old make batsmen such as Ricky Ponting, Andrew Strauss and Kevin Pietersen look like schoolboys on their first outing. Sadly, though, it is not the image of the swinging ball beating the bat, but the repeated sight of Aamer's extended front foot well over the crease, shown time and time again on every TV channel in the country, which is going to haunt not only me but the sponsors who have put in hundreds of crores in India.

Suddenly many of the Australians too are talking about being approached while they were playing earlier against Pakistan, in London and during the Champions Trophy. Atul Wassan, who has been involved with the IPL too, spoke as though players being approached by bookies was as common as being propositioned by a sex worker in the shadier parts of any city!

What was all hunky dory suddenly seems to be as murky as hell, and the entire future of the game is being threatened. If this will not give sponsors sleepless nights, one wonders what else will. For once faith is lost and then everything comes into the realm of doubt and uncertainty. Was Mike Hussey's unforgettable innings in the World Cup semi-final against Pakistan (arguably the greatest innings ever played in the T20 big stage) for real? Was Australia's victory at Sydney truly a jail break and as dramatic as it seemed to me when I watched it first on Star Cricket? Is any cricket match involving Pakistan real at all? If a five-day test match in an alien land can be influenced, what about the shorter versions such as the Champions League, the IPL and, horror of horrors, the 50-over World Cup, which is to be held in the sub-continent early next year?

How safe are any of these? Will I watch any of these? And what about millions of others who may be sharing the same doubt as me and may not be articulating them? What is going to be our reaction when the bowler, albeit genuinely, bowls a “no-ball”? Will we exult at the ensuing “free hit” or wonder about the bowler's integrity? What happens when a fielder drops a catch? While we do know that even the best of fielders can drop a catch, will our thoughts go to the sitters dropped by Younis Khan and Kamran Akmal, who continues to be a darling of the Pakistani selectors even if he has given a new dimension to terms such as “butterfingers” and “iron gloves”? Will the ardent cricket fan continue to watch the game? I am not so sure.

It is money and more of the same

I would be the last to grudge players what is due to them, for they are the ones who bring in the crowds. I used to travel to different parts of the world to watch Gilchrist bat and Warne bowl. Similarly, I am sure that spectators from all parts of the world would come to watch Sehwag and Sachin take on the best of the world.

But it does seem horribly inequitable that the best talent that the world has seen in recent times — Mohammed Aamer (whatever his current ills) — gets paid less for bowling 60 overs in a five-day test match than Ishant Sharma got paid for bowling one ball in the IPL, never mind the fact that the ball was bowled at a ferocious 125 km per hour as that poor lad seems to have lost his pace and his rhythm!

Still, inequity does not excuse the diabolical acts of the captain and his two champion bowlers. Nor do I know if you can entirely blame the political system and the total chaos that seems to prevail in that country that dooms everything including the cricket team. But the issue of wide disparities in incomes of players certainly seems to be an issue. The larger issue is the fact that the governing body – and that means the ICC – is toothless as evidenced by the fact that the tour is still on despite widespread criticism. For the ICC and the PCB it seems to be business as usual no-ball or not.

Where is the Plan B?

A few years ago, I heard an interesting comment on the brand strategies of Indian companies. The speaker said with the straightest of faces “Most companies have a Plan B, which comes into operation when the original plan fails. In India though most companies have a ‘Plan Big B'. When all else fails use Amitabh as your brand endorser.” Well, not an exaggeration, as Amitabh, if my memory serves me right, did 67 commercials in 2004! I wonder if companies have a similar attitude to cricket as they seem to be bitten by the cricket bug despite all the chaos that one can patently see.

I wonder how the IPL will be run without the high-profile founder and as for the Champions League, despite all the hype, I still believe it is likely to be a damp squib, maybe competing with the Commonwealth Games in appeal. Okay, maybe I am exaggerating but the game of cricket is under serious threat and seems to lurch from one crisis to the other. There is a complete and total lack of leadership with most boards, and the leader of the pack is the ICC, which seems to be focused on everything except the long-term interest of the game.

I am sure the sponsors are familiar with the term caveat emptor. They must look out for themselves as the administrators do not have the will to get their house in order. The malaise is too deep-rooted and the spot fixing episode is not the first problem, nor is it likely to be the last. If I were putting my money in cricket, I would seriously have an alternative strategy in place.

Software companies did this. It is called “de-risking”. They looked at markets such as Europe and Japan when the US tanked and at least came out alive. What efforts have the companies who are wedded to cricket made to look for alternatives? I am sure the next few big events that India has interests in – the Champions League, the World Cup and the IPL – have to be watched carefully as a mess in any of these can deal the game a body blow. Indian companies should seriously look at neutral games such as the Ashes, where at least the shadow of fixing does not arise, and move on to safer pastures over a period in time. I am reasonably sure that our sponsors have a different view from my gloomy one. For once, I hope I am wrong for I love the game and what I have got from it but worry for its future.

PS: While still on the subject of Amitabh Bachchan, I have a doubt. Is it true that only cricketers should retire? What about actors? At 68, hasn't he had too long a run? I just cannot bear to watch the Champions League commercials. I only hope the games are better than the ads!

(Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO, brand-comm, and the author of Googly: Branding on Indian Turf. He blogs at www.ramanujamsridhar.blogspot.com.)

The human side of branding

There is a lot more to branding than identity, advertising and public relations. Brands also need to get in touch with their human face.

I want to build my brand.”

I have lost count of the number of times I have heard this statement in the 11 years since we started brand-comm, a consulting company dedicated to building brands. And yet, as is to be expected, people have different expectations from branding and the entire process of branding. The next steps to these statements usually follow one of the following courses of action. ‘I think our identity is dated and today's consumers are young, so let's change it, and shouldn't we be thinking global?' This is good news for international brand consultants and design experts as they instantly see (million) $$ signs. The identity change is announced with great fanfare and it usually goes down like the Indian team went down in Zimbabwe — with scarcely a whimper — as nothing except the identity has changed and the brand is still the same boring brand.

Another alternative is to try to build corporate image through a high-profile TV commercial, probably shot in New Zealand, but without the benefit of a core idea that defines the essence of the brand. “The execution will be clutter-breaking” says the agency Creative Director. The brand promise is not delivered, after all “Yuvarajs” exist in corporate life too!

Another way forward is to hire a public relations firm which goes hammer and tongs at the media — organises one-on-ones, speaker and photo opportunities — all of which generate intense interest about the MD in cocktail parties and amidst head-hunting firms but nothing much happens to the brand. And today there is another option as well.

Sponsor some high-profile IPL team and even if the team does not win a single match, the players dutifully land up at post-IPL parties wearing your brand on their sleeves (if not their hearts) on them.

I know that I am perhaps sounding cynical, a not unexpected reaction from someone my age, but that is hardly the impression I wish to convey or the point I wish to make. There is a whole lot more to branding than identity, colours, TV advertising, sponsorship, events and public relations. While I am not denying the importance or value of these, I think there is something more basic, more obvious and yet, perhaps, more difficult to manage, which is why companies seem to spend so little time on this and that is what I would call the “human side of branding”. Here are a few examples of how companies, however big, get this important aspect of their functioning woefully wrong.

The first impression …

… has the potential of being the worst impression. You enter an impressive building, exquisitely designed, wonderfully architected with a façade that could make you stop in your tracks. You cross the manicured gardens and enter the plush reception. And whom do you meet? A security guard in place of the young, efficient, smiling, helpful receptionists that people of my age were used to seeing earlier, but then this is perhaps the order of the day in most companies.

Of course, some of these security guards are smart, even speak good English and can be courteous enough, as was the security guard at the Oberoi in Bangalore last week. He welcomed me in the traditional Indian way. But many are not the way they ought to be and you can easily imagine the impact on the brand when they are found wanting. Of course, I am fond of repeating my experiences of having been welcomed in a company by a security guard whose company name tag read “Doberman”. Obviously, you can understand my nervousness! Did the Chairman of the company ever walk past this, I wonder, or does he have his own private elevator that enables him to bypass this welcoming committee?

You don't call me,

I will call you

Another quick reality check for a brand is the way the company answers, or should I say does not answer, the phone. How often do we get the impression that the phone is ringing and the operators are having a good time, when the phone is actually busy?

Let's assume that you have achieved the holy grail of actually getting through to the company and to an operator who puts you on hold. Of course, you may be calling the company not because you are in love with it, but probably because it has goofed and you want to give it a piece of your mind.

What happens then? You are put on hold and the company's jingle of how it is God's gift to the human race goes on endlessly like the maiden overs that Nadkarni used to reel off and you are seething. So what is your view of the brand at that particular point in time? Top-of-mind for all the wrong reasons is probably your reaction.

Let's move on to a slightly more sensitive topic of company or brand culture. Have you ever tried getting in touch with the CEO of a large company? Life seems to be one long meeting; senior people are constantly in meetings, unreachable despite being online 24 x 7. They never take calls, respond to text messages or answer mails. After all, they are busy. I remember my first boss telling me “you are paid to be busy”.

But are these captains of industry so busy as to be completely unresponsive, sometimes to calls even from their friends and former colleagues? But what happens then? The company takes its cue from the CEO and soon you have a company that is completely, totally inaccessible, at times even to the media.

If, for whatever reason, the company needs you, it will call you a few hundred times! Do these companies ever bother to assess what the rest of the world has to say about them? Do they even care?

And this is precisely how the brand comes across to the rest of the world and I cannot imagine the ignored parties being quiet about the company and its total lack of response. Surely there has to be a better, more sensitive, more humane way of doing business that can impact the brand and the corporate image positively?

A better way to recruit?

Bangalore is the software capital of India, if not the world, and if you were to believe everything that you read about these companies then you would be convinced they are the greatest places to work in. They probably are.

Make no mistake about this, I am a great admirer of Indian software companies and yet here is an incident that made a profound impression on me, even if it had me a bit concerned about how the brand was getting it wrong.

I am going to talk about one of the top software companies in India if not the world. They needed a director for their brand and I had with great difficulty organised one of my juniors from IIM for this; she was the head of a large advertising agency and went for the meeting at my insistence.

There were many calls reminding her of the meeting. She went to the complex and found herself with hundreds of engineers looking for a job. She also found herself at the venue much earlier because the company wanted her to fill up a form! She was hopping mad, and to add insult to injury, it was not the HR head that she met but her lackey.

Clearly, the company was better suited to recruit thousands of engineer trainees but was probably not geared to deal with a senior employee, particularly someone who needed to be wooed. Luckily the lady in question did not have a blog or she could have told the world about the company and its manner of recruitment.

There is nothing wrong with the company, its financial results or even its image. It is still admired and will continue to be admired but such incidents can and will hurt the brand. But then someone has to be aware of the implications of the acts of commission and omission of each and every one of its employees and we are not talking of CEOs here.

Let me end this piece with a quote by Lee Clow: “Managing brands is going to be more about trying to manage everything that your company does.” Yes, everything that your company does! Every action that every employee or your outsourced partner does or does not do continues to impact your brand.

Let's continue this discussion next fortnight. But in the meanwhile can you think about how good your brand's human side is? Think about it and write to me about it at brandline@thehindu.co.in.

(Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO, brand-comm, and the author of Googly: Branding on Indian Turf.)

Is your advertising outrageous?

An ad that succeeds need not always be politically correct but one that identifies with the target consumer..

Fairness for better prospects, marriage so that you can look like a princess - whether you take theads with a pinch of salt or righteous indignation, they will be successful if the insight is right.

Make them laugh, make them cry, for God's sake make them do something” is an advertising dictum that one has read and heard, even if one has not been able to get the creative person to follow this principle as often as I would have liked. Now why do I say that? Everyday there are hundreds of ads that come on TV (millions or so, it seems, on IPL) and in the newspaper that could easily be described as “ships that pass you by in the night” making no impact whatsoever on you, or on thousands of customers like you. And then suddenly you notice an ad that makes you sit up. An ad that hits you in the gut, an ad that perhaps gets your hackles up and you sit up and take notice and you might even say “how dare they do this”. If you are not the target audience and the ad has still intrigued or irritated you, you may try to get a second opinion and may even take the trouble of asking the person for whom you think the ad was meant.

I remember trying to do a review of one of the earlier Fastrack ads set in a classroom when there is a roll call and a number of girls drool “Yes sir”, “Yes sir” when the name of a handsome boy wearing a sexy watch is called out. Of course, the ad was interesting, but however young at heart I may claim to be, I must confess that I did not get it in its entirety, so I did what most parents do when confronted with something new. I asked my second son who was 19 then, the target audience for the ad, what he thought of it and he said, “It's kickass, Pa!” without batting an eyelid, basically saying that it was up to scratch. Of course, I need to confess that if I had spoken like that to Ramanujam Senior, my dad, I may not have been alive to tell the tale.

But the point I wish to make is that often enough, while all of us view advertising and usually have a strong point of view about it, we are not the target customers. Of course, we can certainly air our views to whoever cares to listen and even write about it in blogs but the advertiser, really speaking, should be concerned about the views of the real target audience who is a genuine prospect for the brand and not so much about everyone who has a point of view. Though I daresay people like me also voice their opinion using the Net and making their opinion heard, if not count.

Is it fair?

Another ad which stirred things up quite a bit was the Fair & Lovely ad - I am sure you remember the one with the air hostess, featuring a father who openly wishes he had a son and the indignant daughter uses Fair & Lovely, becomes an air hostess and takes her father to a five-star restaurant where the father naively asks her for the same cup of coffee that created happy chaos just a few weeks ago.

I have seen enough people rave and rant about this ad. I suppose if you live in Lavelle Road in Bengaluru, Boat Club Road in Chennai or Nepean Sea Road in Mumbai, this ad can affect your sensitivities and make you vocal. But then if you live in these places, chances are that you can get your conditioners from Paris. The target audience, however, lives in interior Tamil Nadu or Gujarat, where people unabashedly demand not only dowry but fair brides. Should Hindustan Unilever worry about the people in these smaller towns or the elite group that lives in high-rise condominiums but will never use their product?

We Indians are a hypocritical race, we often mean exactly the opposite of what we say and often pay lip service to lofty ideals. Mind you, I am not saying that everything that manufacturers and advertisers say is true or has to be accepted, but one of the things going for this commercial is that it strikes a chord in the hearts of dark girls even as it makes you and me say “How dare they?” I have seen enough bridegrooms reject my cousins because they were dark even as they blatantly used to say that the “horoscopes were not matching”. They do say that truly great advertising is “on the verge of being outrageous”. To my mind, at least, this ad fit the bill, never mind what people had to say about it and boy did they have a lot to say, even though this was in the ‘pre-blog' days!

Take me to the church on time

A recent ad that stirs up similar sentiments, if not more acute, given the fact that we have people who are blogging, is the ad for Tanishq. You might have seen this ad, which features a modern family, the daughter driving an SUV, the family speaking English, a girl undecided on marriage, but whose life plans quickly change for the better as she tries on the wedding collection from Tanishq. If the girl is independent as she ostensibly seems to be and is not keen on marriage, how can something like diamonds, however exquisite, make her change her mind, the critics ask. If she is a woman of today who is logical and practical and knows what she wants, how can she change her mind, just for the jewellery? And yet, are decisions about marriage so well thought out? I wish they were. Is it also so easy to unravel a woman's mind? From time immemorial, man has tried and failed miserably. Others like me have given up, as we do not believe we have a hope in hell. Don't people say that a woman's mind is as unpredictable as English weather even if the current one promises to be the hottest in years? Hardly surprising that we are not touring this summer, for we are usually followed by wind and rain!

Much as I would like to probe the recesses of the woman's mind, let me reluctantly return to the task on hand and the commercial at hand. Once again, I was intrigued by the commercial and not having a daughter to be married, I turned to the young girls in my office who seem to relate to and conform to the girl in the commercial. They too are educated, know what they want in life, have a point of view and are not afraid to express it. ‘Girls want to look good when they get married.' ‘Marriage is an important occasion.' ‘Anyway one has to get married, why not look good on the occasion?' to a lone voice saying “As if a girl would get married for the jewellery!”

Let's take a closer look at the commercial. It gets your attention, has a good cast and one can certainly expect Arundathi Nag to turn in a good performance. It has an element of surprise in the fact that it proposes something that is unexpected, radical even. But does it offend the sensitivities of the core target audience?

Tanishq is probably not a major player in the wedding market, which is a huge buying occasion which perhaps explains the rationale of the commercial. I have attended weddings in small towns in India, in metros such as Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore and more recently in far-off places such as Chicago and Detroit. Last week, I was at a Tambrahm wedding at Detroit where the father of the bride had the first dance with his daughter, a far cry from Mylapore, but the wedding set still seemed to be very critical with all the women, both young and old, going gaga over it.

What should brands do?

I think the easy, boring way is to take the predictable, non-controversial route that most commercials seem to follow. I wish more clients and agency heads would take risks. I know clients will say that it is their money that I am talking about! But having said that, I do know that in creative and in life the dictum ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained' has some merit. And yet a word of caution is in order. It is not about people like me who write or bloggers, however powerful they may be, but focus on the consumer.

When in doubt, go to the consumer. Tanishq might do well to talk to its consumers through the length and breadth of India and ask people whether people are saying ‘It's cool' like the girls in my office or ‘How dare they?' as a blogger asked. As I often do, let me end with a quote of Bill Bernbach: “If you stand for something, you will always find some people for you and some against you. If you stand for nothing, you will find nobody against you and nobody for you.”

Stand for something, but just check with your consumer whether you are standing for her or against her!

(Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO, brand-comm, and the author of Googly: Branding on Indian Turf)

Blast from the past

Favourite old ads are making a comeback. Did they have to disappear, in the first place?.

Is this revival of old commercials a trend? Or just the action of some smart marketers who are realising that they have good stuff in their own cupboards that can be brought out and screened again to an old audience that recognises them and a new audience that is bound to like them? And more significantly, are there consumers who prefer these old ads to the current crop and would much rather see them?

In the early days of brand-comm, the communications consultancy firm that I founded and that I (occasionally) work for, we did an interesting consulting assignment for Parry's Coffy Bite. For the benefit of those who may not have a sweet tooth or may not have tasted that wonderful bite of confectionery priced at the magical figure of 50 paise, it has a distinctive taste that is a unique blend of coffee and toffee. Children loved the forbidden coffee taste and adults enjoyed the toffee taste.

The first commercial done for the brand was arguably the best, featuring the father and his eight-year-old son both chewing the candy enthusiastically with the son saying “Coffee!” while the father said “Toffee!” and the argument started and continued over the years. Simple thought, clear position, effectively executed. Consumers liked the toffee, not to mention the ad, the brand did well and everyone was happy.

Came the time to change the commercial and complicating the issue was the fact that adults too were tasting the product and enjoying it, and slowly but surely, the focus moved from the taste of the candy to the argument and boy, was it continued! Commercials were made on a number of people having arguments. The commercials became cleverer, the subjects more convoluted and the taste platform was deserted in favour of this more exciting platform, for advertising, at least. The advertising won awards even as the brand, hit as it was by the entry of brands such as Alpenliebe, started to feel the heat in the marketplace.

We came in to look at the situation objectively and all the research seemed to point to a few obvious things. While adults consumed the product, if it happened to be at home, they were not going out to actively buy it. The primary consumer and the heavy user was the kid aged between 8 and 14 years and the product's key attribute was its unique blend of coffee and toffee. The client and agency had moved to the more intellectual terrain of arguments from the taste and it was an obvious solution to come back to the original position that the taste is so good that it is difficult to say whether the taste is coffee or toffee and even run the same ten-year-old commercial for a short time before another execution could be done.

The Tamil poet Kannadasan might have written that the “legs that stray from the right road will not reach their destination” but brands can be more fortunate. They can come back to either running their old commercial or at least reviving the earlier position that served them so valiantly in the past.

Nootruku Nooru Vajram

Another brand which taught us interesting lessons was Vajram, a brand of cement from Dalmia that brand-comm had branded, created the packaging and advertising for and launched in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The communication and branding were research-based and the television commercial ‘Nootruku Nooru' Vajram resonated in homes in Tamil Nadu that avidly watched Sun TV. The brand was one of the most successful cement brands launched in Tamil Nadu and soon became the company's mainstay. The commercial ran for several years and the client, and sometimes even the agency, got tired of it.

Every year at dealer meets we would ask the dealers the same question — “Should we change the commercial?' — and the dealers would look at us as if they had been told ‘India is the best T20 team in the world' and echo a resounding “No!” I am sure they must have been often wondering if the brand was in safe hands. ‘If it ain't broke, don't fix it' might well have been their impression. Several years later, just recently, in fact, the commercial has been changed. I do not wish to comment on that as we no longer handle the communication, but I just wonder! I am sure the results will soon be out for the customer tells us in no uncertain terms what she thinks about the communication and the brand.

People of my age may be forgiven for living in the past and going back to ‘those good old days' when batsmen walked and bowlers politely questioned umpires and where captains did not blame IPL parties for their lacklustre performance. Similarly too, ads were few and far between just like cricket matches and people remembered ads and spoke about them, as they did about deeds on the cricket field. All of this leads me to the key point that I wish to make:

Why can't agencies run some of their old commercials for the brand rather than creating new, expensive advertising which often enough is not a patch on the old one?

To prove my point: ITC Sundrop had a very successful launch commercial of a boy doing somersaults in the midst of some fluffy puris. I was pleasantly surprised to see the same commercial after several years, a commercial that I had liked even if it did nothing to make me more careful about my spreading waist even if the waist was not accompanied by the usual material prosperity that people associate with it. I also saw a commercial featuring Hrithik Roshan where a little boy is having difficulty watching a match in a dealer outlet because taller, stronger, more insensitive people were blocking his view. He sits dejected on the pavement only to be joined by Hrithik Roshan who sees his predicament and switches on the match in his mobile on R World and Yuvraj hits a six and the world erupts.

Yes, my friend, those were the days Yuvraj was fit, was hitting sixes and India was winning matches and commercials were working. Again I am getting sidetracked. Another commercial that I saw recently and that was made earlier was for Mak lubricants featuring a young, sexily dressed girl with the song ‘ Jawaani something something' playing in the background (You must forgive me, I can remember the tune and the music but cannot remember the Hindi words).

Is this revival of old commercials a trend? Or just the action of some smart marketers who are realising that they have good stuff in their cupboards that can be brought out and screened again to an old audience that recognises them and a new audience that is bound to like them? And more significantly, are there consumers like me who prefer these old ads to the current crop and would much rather see them?

The paint of India

Asian Paints is one of India's most savvy marketers and I have always loved its advertising. Whenever I have had the opportunity I have written, spoken about and brought it out as case studies in my classes and training sessions. Take the case of the Asian paints Apex which too has had some outstanding advertising over the years. It started with ‘Sunil Babu' whose tone of voice and style of delivery became a way of speech in India and when it got translated into Tamil the ‘ Kalkarrey Chandru' became a part of the local idiom of Tamil Nadu. What more can a copywriter hope for?

The next ad was for Apex Ultima and featured another popular TV commercial (in my book, at least) of a Chote Nawab standing in front of racing horses who kick up a cloud of dust. The villagers are astonished and the shaken Nawab preens himself ready to receive the accolades of the villagers rushing towards him. He finds to his consternation, however, that the villagers are running towards the house and the line says “ Haan toh bhai, bahari diwaron par dhool ko tikne na de” which I am told is ‘Dust can never remain on a wall painted with Apex Ultima'. Even if I did not understand the words, it made sense to me and an impact on me.

I wish I could say the same about the new Apex Ultima commercial featuring a performing magician who is able to make the house disappear but not the paint. I can't explain why the ad leaves me cold. Is it because I prefer the older, simpler ones? Is it because the brand suddenly tries to be upmarket and suave in startling contrast to the earlier ones? Of course, the standard responses of agency types to statements such as these are usually “You are not the target audience?” Excuse me, but I am, I am just building a house in a golfing resort in preparation for my retirement and in the hope that my golf handicap becomes less of an embarrassment!

At stumps

So here are a few thoughts for your consideration:

Are you getting tired of your commercial before your customer is? Have you checked with the consumer or the trade?

Does it still have legs? Have you measured wear-out?

Who is pushing for change, you or your agency? (One client shared the funny problem of the new creative director in the agency trashing the client's commercial made by his predecessor in the same agency and pushing for change).

Are you changing your position?

Are you losing out in the process of change?

In short, are you throwing the baby out with the bath water?

(Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO, brand-comm, and the author of Googly: Branding on Indian Turf)

Is IPL losing its sheen?

The league tournament should aim to provide entertainment from the cricket pitch, not from I-T raids at its offices or television studios.


The third edition of the IPL tournament is in its last leg and the teams are fighting it out in the trying heat and dust. Batsmen are finding it easier to sweat bucketloads than to make runs. Teams seem to have some strange affinity for the number “12” as five teams seem to be stuck on this magical points figure. The stadia seem full, at least at Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata and Delhi. TRPs are soaring, IPL post-match party tickets are being sold at Rs 50,000 if rumours are to be believed. But things are not as hunky dory as they ought to be. The attention shifted slowly but surely from the cricket to franchisee ownerships, bribes, mudslinging and more, taking its toll on Shashi Tharoor. Reports have it that Lalit Modi will also be forced to quit. In short, whatever is happening with the induction of new teams is, to borrow a phrase as old as the game, “just not cricket”.

IPL a revolutionary brand

I have no doubt in my mind that IPL revolutionised the face of cricket in India definitely, and the world. It is an idea whose time had come, and whether the inspiration was Kerry Packer, the NBA, American baseball or the fact that twenty-twenty cricket was, like David Warner, just waiting to explode, the concept took off. It was brilliantly packaged, wonderfully promoted and successfully executed even if it was a bit ‘in your face' for my liking. But let's give Lalit Modi his due for creating a global brand in a very, very short period of time.

The western world tried to ignore this for some time, and then grudgingly had to accept even as its own players came running to be a part of it. Even if many of the global players sat on the bench like our software engineers of yesteryears, they did not seem to mind. The unique mix of Bollywood, team owners who cried in the stands, cheerleaders who had not the foggiest notion of who was playing, ageing cricketers who showed their younger counterparts a thing or two, whether it was the zooter or the mongoose bat, some outstanding emerging Indian talent, some close finishes, some breathtaking innings, some shocking bloomers, all contributed to the enormous success of the format.

Too much, too soon?

While JM Keynes said that in the long run we are all dead, Jack Welch said that while any fool can make money in the short run (and here I am paraphrasing) and any fool can make money in the long run, it needs true ability to make money in both, the long run and the short run. There is no denying the phenomenal success of IPL in the short life it has had so far. It has not only created a following (if not for the local teams) but managed to make people buy enormously expensive tickets and advertisers buy dubious advertising properties at fancy prices. Already the climate is being created for the advertising rates to touch an all-time high. For the next IPL, the Max mobiles and the Karbonn mobiles of the world are already licking their lips in anticipation, even if I am dreading what I am going to be in for soon.

Lalit Modi must easily be the most photographed and televised person in the country (Shah Rukh Khan, kindly excuse) as every newspaper, television channel and Web site seems to either love or hate him. No half measures with our man, are there? In fact, if we were to do a “share of voice” analysis, compare and contrast the coverage that Lalit Modi has with, say, a gentleman by the name of Manmohan Singh, who has the job of Prime Minister of the country, the latter would be a distant second. This, of course, is a commentary on the sad state of news coverage in this country that I shall come to later, but let's stay with the brand IPL and the current imbroglio it seems to have gotten itself into.

Trouble in God's own country

Kerala is an absolutely delightful place to visit and holiday in. But despite Shashi Tharoor's overt and often misplaced enthusiasm for the place as a business destination investors have been wary of going there, and I think it is irrelevant (at least for this author) to figure out the rightness or wrongness of perceptions about investing here. But there is no doubt in my mind that the latest investment by an IPL franchisee has put the cat amongst the pigeons.

It has all the ingredients of a media potboiler. A suave, sophisticated minister who tweets into trouble with the ease which the Indian team used to get into corners; a lady whom the media say is close to the (now former) minister and who has sweat equity in the company; owners who are not well known as some of the other franchisee owners; rumours that a current cricketer is part of the team; an allegation by the CEO that Lalit Modi offered him a bribe (which indiscreet utterance has already cost him his job); tweets from Lalit Modi about the uncertainty of the owners, allegations and counter allegations flying around, questions raised about the original franchisees … Thank God newspapers have only 16 pages!

One of my learned clients made a very interesting observation. He said that earlier in news capsules you had clearly demarcated time slots for different aspects - local news, international news, sports, entertainment and so on. But if you analyse today's telecast it is all about entertainment and sports, and if news does not entertain, it will not make it. Well, the IPL is certainly entertaining, and the franchisee confusion is certainly entertaining but what about the brand which had the possibility of being a future icon?

Controversy is king

A few years ago I was teaching some international students from the UK who were visiting IIM, Bangalore. I showed them the Fair and Lovely air hostess commercial, telling them it had been controversial and had to be pulled off air. They were very excited as controversies, they said, kept the brand in the news and were valued in the UK. It was interesting too to read the views of a few advertisers today, who said that controversy is good for the IPL brand. Sadly, I disagree. It is true that brands reflect the personality of their owners. Kingfisher represents the “king of good times” and what better exponent of the good times than Vijay Mallya. But that example is different as it is a pretty good beer, has the right image and as long as the weather in India remains as salubrious as it is (!) the brand will fare brilliantly.

IPL is a different kettle of fish. Lalit Modi is someone whom you either love or hate. Without the benefit of formal market research, I can only say that he seems to have rubbed an enormous number of people the wrong way, and he is the IPL brand, for many of us at least. And while being in the news is great, I am not sure whether making the headlines with a tax raid on your offices is great publicity for your brand.

Circumspection is the key

Lalit Modi runs the risk of being caught on an uncovered wicket on the day after overnight rain. His brand is under scrutiny. He should try to bat like Jack Hobbs or Geoffrey Boycott with his eye on the ball. Sadly, he is batting like Robin Uthappa. I am sure he has the confidence to handle anything, after all, Indian businessmen think they can handle anything, including the law. But he should spare a thought for the brand that he has built so quickly, and a brand that is the envy of the world. Brands are difficult to build and easy to dent. They are like fine pieces of crystal that need careful handling, love and affection even.

It is the time for objectivity, for Lalit Modi. Time to tweet less and time to think more. A time not to fight someone else's political battles, but a time to remember the things that made IPL a phenomenal success and go back to the basics. It is about entertainment in the sports field, not in media rooms and television studios. It is again a time to look at the consumer. Lalit Modi would do well to remember that there are a lot of people who would wish him to fail and he must prove them wrong, not only for his own sake but for the sake of the brand that he has singlehandedly built.

Will he? Won't he? Only time will tell.

(Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO, brand-comm, and the author of Googly - Branding on Indian Turf.)

Image Source : Starbozz

Are you teasing your customer?

The moment brands irritate consumers, they will get into serious trouble. Brands such as Karbonn and MRF are riding on the IPL bandwagon. But there isn't any method in the madness, sadly.

One of the most entertaining commercials I have seen over the years is for Rolo, a brand of confectionery. The commercial opens in a zoo where a little boy is watching a baby elephant. He has a sweet in his hand and beckons the elephant, ostensibly with the intention of giving it the sweet. When it comes close to him, he pops it into his own mouth, mocking the poor elephant in the process. The film cuts to several years later where there is a young man wearing a sweater similar to that of the young boy's shown in the commercial and there is a procession of elephants which our young man is watching with interest. Suddenly one of the elephants in the procession turns around and thumps the young man on the head. Clearly the young elephant has not forgotten being tormented several years ago and the voiceover goes on to say “Think twice what you do with your last Rolo”.

Of course, the commercial demonstrates the ‘memory of an elephant' as a creative thought but more importantly it shows the need for marketers and brand managers to be careful with their consumers and not tease them or needle them unnecessarily. So what's the connection, must be the question uppermost in your mind. That's because as we get into the business end of the IPL (is there any other end?) cricket season, I feel that the organisers, the sponsors and the television channels should spare a thought for the poor customer sitting at the other end of the television screen who is being constantly harassed, bombarded and insulted. And who knows how long she is going to be patient? I say ‘she' deliberately as perhaps one of the real achievements of the IPL has been its ability to get women to come and watch not only in the stadia but also in living rooms. I think the point to be made is that while IPL has put India on the global sports marketing map and shown the world a thing or two it is certainly throwing up certain distressing signs and early warning signals that marketers must be alert to.

Properties and all that jazz

Marketers are constantly looking for properties that their brands can own and at times it is easier to buy some properties from media and try and make the most of them. The IPL has demonstrated a tremendous ability to make things sound larger than life, and “first ever' and “best ever” are terms that seem commonplace here. Let me explain. T20 cricket is all about fours and sixes and never mind about the poor bowlers who in any case are being paid to get slaughtered. The pitches are deader than mortuaries in government hospitals while the boundary ropes are being made shorter and shorter and at times rival the length of the cheerleader's skirts! So more sixes are scored in a T20 game than in a season of test cricket and not surprisingly sixes are a hot media property called the “DLF Maximum” And we have commentators who are better served being at the WWE so much do they rave and rant once the ball clears the short ropes!

And then there are the catches called the “Karbonn Kamaal Catch” which takes the cake. A fielder holds a catch which a schoolgirl would normally hold with her eyes closed before the commentator nearly has a heart attack waxing eloquent about the Karbon Kamaal Catch which could also be a Citi moment of success - another branded property from a bank that has redefined success in recent times. Nor is that all. There is another blot on the landscape in the form of an MRF blimp which is being heralded as the greatest technological innovation after the space shuttle and then there are strategic time-outs (all branded) and tons of commercials, creepy crawlers in the frames, a commercial being shown on the big screen in between balls, Akshay Kumar flying around the kitchen playing tennis and a completely bewildered and irritated consumer who doesn't know what on earth is hitting her.

Advertising makes the world go around

Mind you, I am a great fan of advertising (after all, the industry has fed and clothed me for three decades now) but surely there has to be a method in the madness. Isn't this a bit of overkill? Are these advertisers watching these commercials when they come on air or listening to what people have to say about them? I would urge them to come into my living room when a few of my friends are watching the match with me. They would cringe and immediately pull their commercials off air. Some of these brands are big – why are they trivialising themselves? Take MRF, one of the brands I truly admire. A brand which has consistently stayed with cricket, a brand with a heritage, a brand that has done so much for the game in the country, a brand that has legends endorsing it … It got the enthralling serial Bodyline into the country nearly two decades ago and persisted with cricket and has built its equity over the years. Yet, I feel sorry for the brand. If only the people in MRF would listen to the inane stuff that is being said while their blimp is being shown, they would quickly jump ship and start endorsing ice hockey. Television is not the “theatre of the mind” as radio is for the viewer to imagine what is being said. I am seeing the telecast, for God's sake! Why are you insulting my intelligence?

Why brands need to be careful

Today brands live and try to grow in a crowded marketplace. They are often trying to outshout each other and create awareness for themselves. While awareness is all fine, I think the ambience in which brands present themselves to their consumers is extremely important too. Brands have a personality and every appearance must reflect that personality. Are the brands as loud, grating and in-your-face as they are made out to be by their presence in IPL? And how can brands that are in different stages of their life adopt the same strategy? A new brand such as Karbonn that wishes to establish itself needs to perhaps shout to get attention, but should not the Citis of the world and the MRFs do something more subtle and sophisticated? In fact, it would be very interesting if the large spenders did an objective evaluation after this exposure as to what consumers think of their brands. Yes, a lot more people might be aware of the brand, but what would the values associated with the brand be?

Hype vs substance

The IPL is an entertainment extravaganza and there is a kaleidoscope of colour, sound, lights, celebrity and, on occasion, skin on display. Of course, in the middle of all this is cricket, in between strategic time-outs of course. So it is easy to get carried away. It is like watching a “first day first show” of a Rajnikant movie. There is constant excitement - rupee notes are being thrown on the screen, people are whistling, shouting and clapping. The atmosphere has to be seen to be believed. Yet, how do you evaluate the movie? Can you, at all? I think the IPL is in a similar situation. There is so much hype and hoopla around it that brands can lose their way or what is worse, lose their character. More importantly, every brand is trying to dumb itself down and talk the language of the lowest common denominator and that is bothering me as a consumer.

I think we need to remember one thing. The Indian consumer is not yet cynical. He believes the advertising that he sees and trusts in celebrities. He believes what he reads in the newspaper and what he sees on TV, He thinks the expert is objective, perhaps with a slight India bias. But what one is seeing in the IPL is the world of hyperbole. Everything is exaggerated, amplified and made larger than life. It is easy for brands to succumb to the heady potion that the IPL is dishing out. But concerns remain. If brands lose credibility then all that they have been doing for years might just become diluted.

Yes, these are challenging times, but also times of great opportunity. But as always one needs to be anchored in the basics. The basics are simple. Business is about brands and brands are about consumers. The moment brands irritate consumers, they are going to be in serious trouble. I am on the verge of getting irritated. Are you?

(Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO, brand-comm, and the author of Googly: Branding on Indian Turf.)

Beware the aura of IPL

Some of the glitz and glamour is bound to pall, given that there's much cricket from around the world being beamed into living rooms in India..

Stars all:The owners of the teams, Ness Wadia and Preity Zinta (Kings XI Punjab - left, extreme right), Shilpa Shetty (Rajasthan Royals – second from left) and IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi (second from right).

Australian cricket dominated pretty much all opposition it came up against from the mid-'90s till the end of 2006 at least, thanks to two outstanding champions, Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne. It would be difficult to find two more dissimilar individuals in one team, but they had one thing in common — both were champions. Batsmen came to grief against these two, who often bowled their team to victory in tandem, more often than not because opposing teams ended up playing more than mere bowlers but battled the strength of their collective auras which combined to make the Australian team almost impossible to beat. Batsmen, thanks to the benefit of TV technology, had nightmares of the Gatting ball (or the ball of the century as it was branded) whenever the blond leg spinner came to bowl. They unearthed demons that were non-existent and played for drift that seemed larger than life and lost their wickets with surprising ease. As for McGrath, his annoying ability to deliver ball after ball on the same spot added as much to the pressure as his in-your-face displeasure if the batsman had the temerity to hit him for four.

Whilst there is no denying the phenomenal ability of these two bowlers, their success, in no small measure, was due to people sitting in the commentator's box and the media enclosures who aided and abetted the batsman's downfall with their analysis till paralysis of the bowlers' collective and individual abilities. Batsmen predictably ended up making horrendous errors of judgment and finished up looking silly, like Atherton often did, to the obvious delight of Aussie fans. When I looked at the recent IPL auction, with Kieron Pollard being bought for a staggering $750,000, I just wondered if there was a similarity between what happened on the cricket field earlier and what is happening now under the hammer and also analyse what has generally been happening with IPL since its inception.

Giving IPL its due

Make no mistake about it, India runs the cricketing world, much to the chagrin of some of our less fortunate cricket boards. India has the eyeballs, the sponsors, the money, the ability to brand and sell anything, including the weather forecast that precedes cricket matches, and just about everything that makes the world go around and everything that can make its detractors go around the bend. Often enough, India has made no bones about its clout and has blatantly flaunted it. But even diehard critics and the prophets of doom have had to concede that the IPL has been a marketing coup that showed the entire world a thing or two about sports marketing. It is a real concern though that IPL may hasten the demise of test cricket, but let us resist the temptation to set the cat amongst the pigeons just yet and stay with the marketing of IPL. IPL demonstrated the ability of its creators to build a brand in a very short period of time, create and deliver value even as it commanded a phenomenal premium for its offerings — whether it was television rights, franchisee bids for the teams or its ability to make players from all over the world drop everything and come running to India. Interestingly, some of them, such as Collingwood and Owais Shah who were constantly complaining about player workload, did not even get a game despite travelling halfway across the world!

It's a brand new world

Kieron Pollard, who was sold for $750,000, to Mumbai Indians
IPL has been all about brands, sponsorships and celebrities of varied hues. It has seen the emergence of unlikely businesspersons in people such as Shah Rukh Khan, Preity Zinta and Shilpa Shetty from the world of entertainment, a charismatic business leader in Vijay Mallya entering cricket, Nita Ambani and a range of companies from media, infrastructure and cement, all of whom have forked out enormous amounts of money. It has also seen some of the office-bearers of the BCCI as owners of teams which might upset the purists but in Indian cricket, as we all know, anything goes, including the obnoxious behaviour of people such as Sreesanth and Ajit Agarkar. The bidding for the players has been a high-profile event where ordinary mortals such as you and I can witness how the rich and famous bid huge sums of money for the superstars of the T20 stage just the way they might bid for thoroughbreds! The IPL, quite simply put, is a heady mix of entertainment, glitz and glamour, with some cricket thrown in somewhere in the middle! But it is working or has been working for the people involved, including teams from Australia and the West Indies who have come to India, won and made an enormous amount of money in the bargain? Of course, if media reports are to be believed, the winning team from New South Wales has not been paid, but should we waste our time with needless details such as these?

Get ready for the next edition of IPL

The next edition of IPL will hit not only Indian grounds, Indian crowds, and global television audiences but also an online audience through YouTube. One of the characteristics of the IPL brand has been innovation even if one were to ignore the strategy break which was a poorly disguised attempt to sell more commercial time! Who knows, there may soon be pink balls! But in all fairness the brand has tried to innovate constantly and really showcased the enormous marketing acumen of the people who have been the brains behind this amazingly successful venture. They have been able to smell money anywhere!

A word of caution

Having spoken of IPL's tremendous strengths and offerings it is perhaps worthwhile to sound a word of caution to people who are placing enormous bets on the event and continue to do so. Clearly they are being carried away by the moment as they seem to be awestruck by the aura of IPL and are not placing as much emphasis on the possible return on investment that they seem to be making without so much as batting an eyelid! Starting from the franchisee bids for the teams, IPL has been all about premium pricing. Franchisees too ended up paying phenomenal sums of money, not only for the players, but for Indian stars with iconic status, many of whom will certainly not play for their country in the T20 format of the game.

The pricing for the television spots has been extremely high and some of the initial sheen, in my view, at least, is bound to wear off thanks to the phenomenal amount of cricket that is being played across the world, all of which is being shown in India, including the KFC big bash. But my biggest bone of contention has been the often reckless manner in which team owners have been buying cricketers. Many of the big-ticket items have been poor buys. Names such as Andrew Symonds, Kevin Pietersen, Andrew Flintoff, Kieron Pollard and even Shane Bond come to mind. Shane Bond is an amazing cricketer, with an astoundingly straight action amidst a generation of varying degrees of crookedness, but to pay what he is being paid for delivering four overs defies logic. Whilst I am happy for the benign policeman whose pension must be adequately provided for, I have nothing but scepticism about the outcome which might turn out to be a worse buy than the highly priced Ishant Sharma. I wonder if teams and their owners are succumbing to the aura and the excitement of the moment, the glare, the media attention, all of which does not make for sensible decision-making.

A prediction about the IPL ahead

Soon it will be IPL time and old foes will lock horns again, some of them with reconstituted teams. Younger legs will replace more tired ones and a new lot of retired and ICL players will make their debut, such as Damien Martyn and Shane Bond. The Pakistanis will be missing and have left no one wondering about their displeasure. Only the retired Australians will be here. But it is just preceding the T20 World Cup and just after a crowded season where everyone was playing everyone else. The Under 19 World Cup is happening in New Zealand and many young Indians will soon be tempted with money, big money. Yes, it is all waiting to happen. But my suggestion to people who are going to put their money where their mouth is, is to keep their hands carefully inside their pockets. Evaluate every opportunity with the care that it deserves. IPL is McGrath and Warne several times over in the magnitude of its aura. Bring back old fashioned Yorkshire wisdom to your decision-making lest you play a shot that Geoffrey Boycott would brand as “rubbish”.

(Ramanujam Sridhar is the CEO, brand-comm, and the author of Googly. Branding On Indian Turf".)