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

All year round

It was the perfect battlefield. The enemy was there, the viewers had taken position, the ammunition was all ready, even the timing was right – a scorching summer. Only the two warriors refused to go to war. The sixth season of the Indian Premier League tournament with beverage maker PepsiCo India as the title sponsor would seem to have presented the perfect opportunity for Pepsi and its arch rival Coca-Cola to take digs at each other. After all, the ad war between the two is legendary with the two rivals brands known for their aggressive comparative advertising which poked fun at each other. But Pepsi has launched its marketing blitzkrieg at the start of the season sans any fireworks. Coke, in turn, seems to have given the tourney a cold shoulder and is quietly going about doing its own thing. So has the fizz gone?

The fizz is still there but it is now directed at the market instead of each other. In the last decade, as the market for aerated drinks matured, so did the manufacturers, who now prefer to concentrate on building the category. To start with, both the players are looking to reduce their dependency on the summer season, the peak season for their sales, so much so, that this year they began advertising as early as January. Coca-Cola India hit the first salvo with the launch of its brand campaign, ‘Crazy for happiness’.

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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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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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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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A gentleman with a bat

David Ogilvy the advertising legend wanted that rare breed for his advertising agency “gentlemen with brains”. The greatest gentleman that ever trod the cricket field – Rahul Dravid called it quits from all forms of cricket at a farewell press conference at Bangalore on Friday. Even as encomiums pour in from all and sundry from different parts of the world, I thought I would write a few words about Dravid the cricketer and the person. His deeds on the cricket field have been well recorded. The nickname “the wall” was earned after years of playing some of the finest bowlers in the world in every cricketing country in the world and even as Indians earned the justifiable nickname of “lions at home and lambs abroad” Rahul Dravid stood head and shoulders above his more celebrated and written about colleagues – as he simply batted better abroad. More than his batting was his selfless attitude of team first, something that individual record obsessed Indians never fully understood. When he first declared the Indian innings with a desire to win a cricket match when Sachin was short of his century (though he was truly dawdling at the crease), Dravid copped a lot of criticism. But he soldiered on – always taken for granted, never truly appreciated to the extent that he should have been.

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Cricket going “down under”?

The sport is proving to be too much of a good thing, and then not even that.

Friday the 13th. Contrary to what the date suggested, it turned out to be a brilliant, sunny day at Perth. For the Indian cricket team and the hapless Indian cricket fan, though, it could not have been gloomier. The much vaunted Indian test batting line-up that has scored an aggregate of over 50,000 test runs among them and who have put most attacks and bowlers to the sword, folded up for a mere 161 (yet again) after being put in to bat. That was not all. David Warner, who made his reputation in the Indian Premier League, bit the hand that fed him by doing a Virender Sehwag on us, as Shashi Tharoor cleverly tweeted. Around 2.30 p.m. on that fateful day, I called my long-time friend and co-cricket lover to commiserate with him. If anything he has been more cricket-mad than me, faithfully getting up at 4.30 a.m. for a 5 a.m. cricket match and sitting dutifully in front of the television, coffee mug in hand. But he shocked me, when I asked him the score. “I have switched off,” he said.

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Service? What service?

What's the problem with customer service — money or the lack of empowerment?

All of us are consumers and some of us are service providers and every consumer is different in her own way. Some of them are constantly teaching us a thing or two while most of us obstinately refuse to learn or change. Having made some dramatic statements that run the risk of sounding pompous, let me cut to the chase and to my own story and see if there is any learning. It started on a Sunday afternoon, which, incidentally, happened to be the third day of the Nottingham Test which was at an interesting stage. At least, it was, when I was watching it at the airport waiting for my flight to be called. England and Bell were just turning it around.

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TV ratings remain flat for IPL

Through IPL 2011, ESPNcricinfo will be tracking TV ratings using the TAM People Meter, India's leading TV ratings system. This is the second installment in the weekly series

The 2011 IPL continues to struggle to attract viewers compared to last season, with ratings down 21.99% on average for the first 26 games across six key markets. The drop was even steeper over the last ten games, with ratings falling by 27.08%. The likely culprits are cricket fatigue and a lack of familiarity with the teams, say media experts.

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Champions on the field!

Intrigued by the headline? The different faces of India are fodder for our columnist this week.

If the sponsors and organisers of the Cricket World Cup 2011 had drawn up a wish list before the impressive opening ceremony at Dhaka, the list might well have included:

Teams from the subcontinent in the last four (well, three of the last four were from the subcontinent)

India beating Australia in the knock-out (ideally it could have been the semi-final but I am not complaining).

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Cricket mad or actually Mad?

Ramanujam Sridhar, CEO, brand – comm.
Read my blog @ http://www.brand-comm.com/blog.html
Facebook: facebook.com/RamanujamSridhar
Twitter: twitter.com/RamanujamSri

Let the games begin!

Thankfully all the pre-World Cup hype, hoopla and spin are over and it is time for the actual cricket to take centre-stage. All the former World Cup-winning captains have done their promotional bit and will give way (reluctantly perhaps) to the winners of the 2011 World Cup. Since I believe in the wisdom of the statement “Forecasting is difficult, particularly of the future” I will not stick my neck out (as I did before the Ashes) and stop with merely saying that both my heart and head say that this is perhaps India's best chance to win the cup.

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The Times That We Live In

While advertisers are trying to get Young India right, will they please think of the other, especially, younger India watching their commercials?.

Is it a reflection of the times we live in or a young creative person's ability to get our attention?

It is 6.30 a.m. on a wintry morning in Bangalore and England has just retained the Ashes in style, beating an Australian side which used to be “awesome” and is now pretty much “awful”, to raucous chants of the Barmy Army - “Australia, are you England in disguise” they cheer and Australia have nowhere to hide for it is all happening at the Sydney Cricket Ground and not at some remote place like Nagpur or Ahmedabad. Earlier I had proudly watched the Indian resistance on a quagmire of a wicket and India demonstrated to a disbelieving Western world that it deserved to be the No.1 test team in the world as they stood up to everything that the Proteas threw at them, including a bottle on our own home-grown brat Shantakumaran Sreesanth.

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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.)

M. S. Dhoni, 200 not out!

Captain Cool will now surely be marketed left, right and centre, more so because the World Cup is going to be held in India next year..

Two hundred not out! What a fantastic number to see against his name on the scoreboard! I am sure that would gladden the heart of any Indian cricket fan. I am not sure how glad the Indian cricket fan is about a different 200 that will be near M. S. Dhoni's name and that is a not insignificant sum of Rs 200 crore that the charismatic Indian captain has signed for a sponsorship deal, which even surpasses the master blaster's earlier deal of Rs 180 crore.

Clearly, Indian cricket and sponsorship have come a long way and it is only fair that players who bring in the crowds and the eyeballs should reap the benefit of the tremendous passion that engulfs the game in this country. Unfortunately, I cannot but think of the “good old days” when cricketers played the game for the love of the game, and of people such as B. S. Chandrasekhar who was as great as they come, who used to go from place to place to play the Ranji Trophy by second-class train and who, incidentally, used to carry his shoes in a small cloth bag! How times have changed and thankfully, for the better! While I have nothing but the greatest admiration for the shrewd Indian captain, I would like to talk about what it means for advertisers and whether this is manna from heaven at all, as some of us would like to believe.

Come to celebrity country

Several years ago Marlboro ran a powerful campaign with the line “Come to Marlboro country”. I do not know if such a place exists like that, but there certainly exists a country for celebrities and that is our own motherland. A country that is starved of success seems to lap up celebrities the way Australians guzzle beer! But surely, it has to make sense for the advertiser and the savvy advertiser must strive hard not to get caught up in the magic of the moment and the heady feeling of signing on the Indian captain.

Let's get back to basics. Why do people sign on celebrities? They can instantly create awareness for your product, particularly a new one. Micromax, the new kid on the block, has suddenly surged in the awareness stakes by signing on Akshay Kumar. It is my personal view that the commercial featuring him as a chef is as bad as some of the actor's recent movies, but it seems to work for the brand, so who am I to complain?

Not very long ago, in 2003 to be precise, TVS Victor had launched its motorcycle with the endorsement of Sachin Tendulkar who had a dream World Cup till the final. Though Sachin was endorsing several brands at that time, he was most strongly associated with the Victor and victors we were till Saurav Ganguly elected to field and till Sachin skied McGrath in the final on that fateful day at Johannesburg! The competition's whisper campaign that it was odd that Sachin the brand ambassador cannot ride a motorcycle largely fell on deaf ears, for Sachin was the Rajinikanth of Indian cricket. He could do anything! What about Lux, the film star's soap from a Sridevi of my time to a Priyanka Chopra of your time? And what about Pepsi, Nike and a whole host of brands that have used and continued to use celebrities with amazing success? All of this is true, but it is perhaps easy to forget that all these are long-term strategies that brands have followed, not just a shot in the dark, hoping that things will somehow work.

Small town boy making it big time

No one can grudge Dhoni the small town boy's amazing success over the years. He has a cool head, even if he seems to have lost his famed locks. He has won India a T20 world cup which none of the fab four have been part of. He has been refused to be intimidated by the Ricky Pontings of the world and handled his opponents a lot more subtly than Saurav Ganguly. He had a lot of women swooning over him, which prompted his in-laws to hasten the wedding and seems to be out of major controversy till date at least. Shane Warne and Tiger Woods do not, thankfully, seem to be his role models. So the sponsor, when he signs on Dhoni, signs on a good, clean celebrity with no baggage. Clearly it is a no-brainer, right? Well, yes and no, and thereby hangs the tale!

The right to choose

Film stars or so the story goes, pick and choose the scripts they wish to work with when it comes to films. It's another story that despite all this choosing, the films they end up making are disasters. Celebrities, particularly those who have been signed on in record deals, may not have this luxury. I am sure Dhoni is going to be marketed left, right and centre over the next few months, especially given the fact that the World Cup is going to be held in India next year. So Dhoni may have a very limited say in the sort of brands he is going to endorse.

So what is likely to happen? Dhoni is currently endorsing 22 brands. Quick! Tell me, how many of these brands do you recall? And imagine the plight of poor consumers if he were to endorse another 18 more! How many of these will consumers remember and how many of these will they actually go out and buy? And in how many will there be a brand fit? One of the greatest challenges that brands face is the dilution of the celebrity's equity and the confusion in the consumer's mind when he/she endorses multiple brands. There was a time when Amitabh Bachchan was in every second commercial. I remember the joke which I heard in a seminar where a speaker said, “Companies usually have a Plan A and a Plan B. A Plan B is an alternative course of action that we are all familiar with.” But in India, companies have a Plan Big B that means when you have no other course of action you sign on Amitabh Bachchan!” I hope we do not get into a similar situation with M. S. Dhoni!

It's all in the strategy, silly!

One of the biggest successes in the Indian context has been the launch of Santro, the strange-looking car from Hyundai. I can say it with confidence as I used to have a Santro and used to heave a sigh of relief when I saw another Santro on the road, leading me to believe that I was not the only one who made the mistake! But Hyundai was an unknown company in India and their long-term use of Shah Rukh Khan has made a big difference to the company's and the brand's dominance over the years. No better way to connect with the Indian audience than by using a local celebrity, particularly a film star.

The initial commercials of a bemused Shah Rukh Khan being wooed by a Korean gentleman with the theme line “will he, won't he” made a big difference to the brand. The actor's love affair with the brand has continued over the years, he has roped in Priety Zinta and is now in love with the i10. Clearly, the celebrity has made a difference to the brand.

A crucial factor in having an actor is the ability of the actor to bring alive even mediocre scripts. The original Coke commercials with Aamir and the Parker pen commercials with Amitabh had good scripts, but the actors took them to a different level with their ability to emote. Dhoni may be a passable actor, but he cannot live the character, which will pose another challenge to our script writers. How many commercials are we going to have in which Dhoni plays himself?

It's World Cup time, folks!

The World Cup will be here in India even if the benign assassin Murali will not be there. As always, it will be preceded by enormous hype and a lot of pressure to market Dhoni. The brands which have signed him on already may have to continue, if it still makes sense to them. What about the whole host of new brands that will be targeted aggressively? My advice is simple. India has never won the World Cup at home. In fact, no home team ever has, not even Australia which had its worst record in 1992 when the Cup was held there. There will be too much pressure on the Indian team and Dhoni. Carrying the hopes of a billion people in what will be Sachin's final World Cup will not be easy. So what is my two-bit on the subject?

Let Dhoni play cricket, do not burden him with additional endorsements till the World Cup. Let him win the World Cup and sign on the world!

(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)

Have mobile, will go to town

Cellular services are thriving, but like several other services and products,

the claims in the advertising are not mirrored in actual performance.

When I entered advertising in the Eighties, cola was the happening category. Agency creative types would give an arm and a leg to work on a cola or a soft drinks account. Captions resonated in young people's minds, won awards for the agency that created them and quickly made it to the editorial as newspapers and magazines adapted the lines and made them their own. In all fairness many of the other categories, dominated as they were by multinational style advertising, had boring and predictable ads. Thankfully people still watched these ads as there was only one channel and usually half a programme to watch. This was before the days of oongli cricket as the remote control had not yet made its diabolical presence felt. And if my memory serves me right, there was research to suggest that people found the commercials more entertaining than the programmes themselves, which was perhaps an indication of how sad the programmes were at that point in time.

Having said that it would be remiss of me not to mention some of the pathbreaking ads of the Eighties, some of which I can still recall and which I still show my students today, some of whom were born after these ads were made. Ads for Vimal, the ‘I love you Rasna' ads, the ‘Lalitaji' commercials, ‘Give me Red' for Eveready, ‘Hamara Bajaj' and the commercial of the Cadbury's girl in the cricket field to name just a few, kept our collars up even if our wallets were thin. And yet, when I show these ads today they seem hardly as exciting as they were when I first saw them. It was for nothing that Bill Bernbach said “Today's smartest advertising style is tomorrow's corn.”

Variety, the spice of life

Perhaps the greatest shot in the arm not only for the Indian economy but for Indian advertising was liberalisation when foreign brands came in quest of the ‘great Indian middle class'. Some flourished while others floundered but advertise they did, with varying shades of creativity. And yet the greatest revolution, to my mind at least, has been the ‘mobile revolution' as India took to mobiles the way a young Sachin Tendulkar took to cricket nearly three decades ago. Young India goes to sleep with its mobile and old India has sleepless nights about the next generation's addiction for mobile phones. But one industry that has not lost any sleep about the phenomenal growth of the mobile services industry is advertising.

Mobile service companies are advertising-dependent, to put it mildly. Companies are in cut-throat competition with each other in the prepaid and postpaid categories, have mindboggling schemes and sexy advertising. The target audience is young, irreverent, has a sense of humour and is completely relaxed as it spends its parents' money! Mobile services is a brilliant advertising category that can entertain, beat the clutter, make you smile and even win your agency awards. What more can anyone ask for?

Of course, there is a slightly discordant note that I must bring up (I think it is my horoscope that prevents me from seeing the brighter side of things) and that is about how far removed from the truth this advertising often is. Every mobile service ad talks about phenomenal coverage. The pug follows the little girl wherever she goes, signifying the depth and width of the coverage. It is a completely different matter that my colleagues in Mumbai are extremely fit as they have to run out every time their mobile phone rings, as you can't hear a word inside the office! Of course, the fact that I do not run much is evident from my middle!

One of the most recalled commercials for Airtel is one in which the grandfather who is in the village and the grandson who is in the train play chess. Forget connectivity on a moving train in distant lands; as an Airtel customer I can vouch for how dismal the coverage is in not-so-distant places such as Mumbai for I have hell when I go there and even in Bangalore where I live and work. Coverage is the last thing the brand should speak about, for it is like a red rag to disgruntled consumers such as us.

In fact, the advertising for mobile services reminds me of a competition that most management schools have called ‘mad ads' where students are asked to do advertising for an imaginary product or service. Mobile services are definitely there and thriving, but they are like several other service products in the country whose actual performance has no relevance to the advertising that they portray. Make no mistake, mobile services advertising in the country is by and large brilliant, entertaining, and clutter-breaking. Why ask needless questions like “is what they are saying true” and “how good is the actual coverage?”

Withdrawal symptoms after IPL

The IPL is over and for a few days I had withdrawal symptoms as I would mechanically go and sit in front of the TV at 8 p.m. I miss the hysterics of Danny Morrison; Navjot Singh Sidhu's profound wisdom that would fill an entire calling card; the show of legs as the cheerleaders danced to Kannada and Tamil songs; the wistful gaze of an heir apparent on a largely disinterested young star; and the elusive smiles of Preity Zinta as her team discovered new depths; the missed sitters that made me think ‘S***, I could have caught that'; the multiple teams on 12 points; the strategic breaks where the commentators were hard pressed to say anything remotely strategic; the haunting images of Lalit Modi with some pretty woman or the other… A weaker man might have been driven to drink! But thankfully, the ads for mobile services continue to entertain even if Lalit Modi or Shashi Tharoor refuse to. So let me talk about the mobile services ads that I like and that are current.

Show me your tattoo and I will show you mine

Have you seen the one where a lady with South Indian features is chopping vegetables on a kitchen table, Suprabhatham is playing in the background and her pretty daughter approaches her reluctantly and says, “I want to show you something”? The mother looks up, one suspects with dread, God knows what today's youngsters can show and lo and behold, she displays a huge and grotesque tattoo on her lower back. I stared aghast at the tattoo as I thought her mother would and imagine my surprise when the mother says in her pronounced Madrasi accent, “very nice”. It was for “my song” and asks people to listen to what they would like to listen. I am sure lots of people with grown-up children like me love this commercial for Tata Docomo, as they would of the young man who goes for an interview and says exactly the wrong things and yet gets a job! Tata Docomo has been a game changer in the mobile category and its pricing has turned the market on its head. But its success in no small measure is due to the advertising.

Not far behind are the Airtel ads for night time calling featuring Sharman Joshi (I finally figured out his name, after all, South Indian names are a problem for North Indians too) where he speaks to his girlfriend's brother and advises him on what to study before he gets to speak to the girl or when he makes the shopkeeper speak to his mom and bargain on the sari price and butters up his professor on thermodynamics thanks to the Net … So what if Airtel has call drops and you can't hear, at least, they have interesting commercials. And what about Idea Cellular and its whacky commercials that feature crazy contests with Abhishek, his fat attendant and the dumb blonde? The whackier the contest, the more I liked the commercial. And what about Vodafone and the Zoozoos? I know that I am going to upset a few people, including my colleague who is a fervent admirer of the advertising, when I say that the current advertising is not as endearing as the earlier edition. Is it more in your face? More strident? More tailored to suit the brand IPL? I don't know, but I have seen better from the same brand.

And finally it is not only advertising

I have a sneaking suspicion that the mobile brands are taking the easy way out and focusing on creativity and advertising that is manageable. What about customer service and engagement? Let me give you an example as recent as yesterday. My wife received a mail from her personal relationship manager whose name I shall not mention saying “thank you” and that she was “special” and how she was her personal relationship manager. There was a small problem though; the mail started with “Dear Sir/Madam,” and went on to say all those glowing things. My wife being the difficult customer that she is wrote back:

“Thank you for your mail (here she had addressed the relationship manager by name). If I am such a valued customer, I am surprised that your database does not tell you whether I am a male or a female.

Regards, …”

Ouch!

I think it is time mobile service companies realised that there is more to life than advertising. Advertising is fun. It is glamorous. It is sexy even, like the tattoo ad. But the boring stuff is what customers bond with and that is customer experience and service.

Is anyone listening or are they too busy making ads?

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