IPL to ICC in just 20 seconds!

Companies should go over advertising and marketing strategies given the situations the various T20 tournaments throw up, be it broadcast timing or duration of the match..

The IPL has been done and dusted. The Deccan Chargers have just won the extravagantly designed trophy that is another testimony to the IPL’s opulence. Even before the celebrations ended and the hangover subsided cricket teams are fighting anoth er T20 tournament, this time for the World Cup! (Unfortunately for India, it is out of contention, having crashed out in the Super Eights stage.)

Today cricket matches and tournaments are a process, not an event, as they follow each other like waves from the ocean. No one but the players and the spectators seem tired, as the marketers seem to be busy working out promotional schemes by the dozen and ad agencies seem to be producing hundreds of television commercials which seem quite similar to each other. All too often one ends up watching the same boring commercial 17 times on the same day!
If some media reports are to be believed the T20 World Cup is a sell-out for ESPN Star and prices are at least 20 per cent higher than the pricing of the IPL. Of course, there are different sets of sponsors for both these programmes. As we are not involved as advertisers or sponsors, but merely as consumers of advertising who are gifted with 20-20 hindsight, even if some of us are constrained to wear spectacles in real life, we are free to air our views on advertising, cricket, life after IPL, brands … in fact, anything that the editor of this august newspaper permits!

What’s the time, yaar?

I am a diehard cricket fan and watch most games ball by ball and then religiously watch the highlights and the Extra Innings and the Fourth Umpire and the Stumped and every other boring cricket-related programme that comes on air. Yet we are a dying breed and even the most ardent of us are having trouble staying awake at 1 a.m. to watch the epic struggle between India and Ireland. We are getting into trouble with our bosses in the recessionary times that we live in, as our bosses, sadly, seem to have lost their interest in cricket and in the bargain, their sense of humour as well. But seriously, the timing of the matches is an issue and while advertisers are putting up a brave face, I am not sure how good the viewership is likely to be for matches which start at 10 p.m. Thankfully, the saas-bahu serials and the Anandams of the world will continue jerking tears from avid viewers as there will be no clash of interest.

Contrast this with the IPL which had brilliant timings from the Indian viewer’s point of view. Oh, what a time we had! We could have a few drinks in readiness, get sozzled during the match and end up cheering the opposing team and would read the next day’s papers to see who the real winner was! One must hand it to Lalit Modi for his time management. I am sure next time he would make the teams play at 6 a.m. in some remote part of the world, just to ensure that Indians like you and me get to watch our favourite players in the comfort of our living rooms, with our glasses in hand.

Timing was the problem which the World Cup faced in 2007 as the matches were played at crazy times (for us at least) in front of empty stadiums and a smattering of unhappy Indians who could not manage to cancel their flights or sell their tickets!
We all know that the viewership in India is directly proportionate to the team’s performance. How many of us watched the engrossing one-run victory of South Africa over New Zealand? Not too many in India, I suspect. Large numbers of Indians will only watch India games if they are held late at night. So my first prediction is that for most of the tournament the TRPs will not deliver the numbers or the economics that media planners want.

Well, in any case, T20 is a lottery as any Australian supporter will tell you, even as the Australian team goes into hiding at Leicester after an ignominious exit. One just hopes that it does not turn out to be a lottery for the advertisers who have spent crores on it!

Do advertising types ever watch their own ads?

My crib is that bank managers never stand in the queue to collect cash on Saturday mornings, principals do not have to meet other principals for the admission of their children, cops never have to pay fines and agency creative guys for nationalised banks never experience their service!

But having said that, I really wish that the large advertisers and agencies would watch their commercials aired several times during a day’s play. In fact, I cordially invite them to my living room to watch the next match. They would writhe if they were to hear the comments and groans from my friends and family as the same commercials come on ad nauseam.
One such commercial that I have seen too often is that of Dhoni for Orient Fans. Mind you, I have several favourites (!), but as I have too few friends in advertising discretion shall be my operating philosophy. Incidentally Dhoni’s batting too seems as laboured as some of his commercials and he seems to be doing quite a few.

It is perhaps here that one should admire brands such as Vodafone, which, being one of the sponsors of the IPL, had the good sense to do 29, or was it 30, different versions for value-added services as they had bought substantial time during the tournament and did not want their viewers to be bored. Reliance Communication, which is the sponsor for the current T20 tournament, too has multiple executions with the handsome Hrithik Roshan (there, I have made my niece happy).

But I too have a Reliance mobile connection and have no clue as to what the commercials are saying, other than the fact that Hrithik is a nice guy who remembers his old friends including the light boy even if he is a bit old! But imagine if Reliance had had only one commercial!
This leads me to something that I feel strongly about. If the T20 calls for a different strategy and execution then how is it that the advertising agency is serving its own boring fare whether it is a K serial or a T20 game? If crores are being spent on the promotion, should at least millions not be spent on the creative product? Imagine running 30- and 40- second commercials in a match that lasts all of 40 overs! Come on guys, get creative! Shorter, edgier, more versions, not more of the same!

IPL, T20 or what is the way ahead?

The purists might refuse to accept the “hit and giggle’ as the way to go for the game, but there is no denying the fact that advertisers and marketers should have no doubts that the future of commercial cricket is here. Money is obviously not unlimited and brands continually have to make choices as to where they will park their funds. So where would I put my money if my brand were to be associated with cricket in some way, as quite a few brands have been? Make no mistake; the World Cup is a big event. But so far it has been a low-key affair if not a damp squib. Even the opening ceremony was dumped, courtesy the glorious English weather!

The crowds, I suspect, are still waiting by the sidelines for the Ashes to begin and the grounds are half full if not fully empty. After all, every Englishman and his brother-in-law know that the Ashes are going to change hands this summer, never mind what the form book says.
While national support can muster up the numbers, neutral games have very poor viewership in India, even if they are interesting. Many of the teams that have made it to the Super Eights are quite sad, to put it mildly, and even making allowance for the fact that T20 can cause upsets. A few of the games will make for poor viewing.

Contrast this with IPL with several close games and spectators forming alliances and rooting for teams even if they have foreigners in them.
The charm of T20 is close games, with each over likely to turn the game around on its head. I wonder how many close games the current World Cup will have? I just wonder.
I do know that this is a global event as 216 countries could be sharing the broadcast lead but then India is where most of the money is being spent. And a phenomenal number of eye balls are expected.

I think companies need to think through their future strategies as IPL is here to stay and gives much more flexibility for marketers and sponsors, as the ICC seems to be looking the other way whenever Lalit Modi does or says anything.
So what’s your pick? IPL or ICC? Or should we do an sms poll on Extra Innings?

P.S. Just to lend credence to my crib about ads in the T20, Maruti has this corporate ad which I am sure is a hastily done edit of earlier commercials. So there is a sequence where a boy has a placard saying “want to go home for Diwali”, never mind the fact that the ad is being shown in June.
Oh, well, Happy Diwali!

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

The ICC drops the World Cup!

The 13th of June 1999 was a pleasant day at Headingley and it ended up being a memorable one. In a crucial match the pugnacious Steve Waugh who was battling bravely to keep Australia in the World Cup hit a ball in the air to Herschelle Gibbs, who in his anxiety to celebrate the catch, dropped the ball to the mortification of his teammates and the anguish of the South Africans in the crowd and at home. Steve Waugh is supposed to have made his since immortalised statement “You’ve just dropped the World Cup, son.” I can’t claim to have heard what he said from the stands, but I can definitely make the proud claim “I was there”. And yet 8 years later sitting unhappily in the Caribbean watching another World Cup, I can say with certainty if not with pride that ICC has taken its eyes off the ball and if the handling of the World Cup is any indication, it can certainly teach Herschelle Gibbs a thing or two about dropping the World Cup. To date and as I write this {SriLanka have just beaten New Zealand in another one sided encounter in the semi-finals} this has been one of the longest, most predictable, arguably the dullest and most certainly the worst organised World Cup that one has been part of. I know that it is perhaps unfair to blame the ICC for many of the ills of the current World Cup, but then there is an attendant risk to seeking publicity and credit for events and things that go right. Because when they do go wrong they seem to go horribly wrong and the ICC must stand up and take responsibility like Rahul Dravid instead of talking about the positives that are to be taken out of this event.

Cricket, lovely cricket
Cricket in the Caribbean is more than a mere game or so we were led to believe. It is the very fibre of life there. The land of Sir Garfield Sobers, the three W’s, the land of calypso magic….And it was with stars in my eyes that I went half way around the world-Bangalore to Frankfurt to Miami to St. Lucia to Barbados {Easily the most convoluted way of reaching there as I discovered later} We landed at St. Lucia ready for a scheduled 3 hour wait for a connecting flight to Barbados. A smiling Air Jamaica attendant tells us, even as we scowl, that the flight will be a mere five hours late!!! I am sure the ICC is hardly to blame for the airline’s ills!! But what followed was even more bizarre! It was a match day and I thought to myself that at least let me have the consolation of watching a match on TV as we waited. Imagine my consternation when I discovered that in an airport which is plastered with posters of the ICC cricket World Cup, at a venue where the second semi-final is to be held today, all the TV screens were blank on a match day! To me it seemed like home again where the cable operators are always asserting their independence! Of course I complained. Only to be told by a smiling attendant {these guys are smiling all the time} that I must mention it to the person in charge of tourism! Of course what one saw on TV wasn’t very heartening either and it must have been sadder for all those sponsors who had sunk in so much money on this non-starter of an event. Empty, silent stadia {Remember no musical instruments and just a few locals}.The cost of the match ticket, or so one heard, was higher than the weekly wage of the average West Indian. Food and drink were expensive and two of the matches that I saw finished by lunch which probably explained the pricing of the beverages!! There were no bell boys or ground attendants in sight!! Adam Gilchrist said it was unnerving to play to empty stands in the World Cup. Not that it deterred him from hoisting a few into the stands empty or otherwise. And for someone from India it was really strange to see this in Grenada. The ball was hit into the stands by one more Australian batsman and the Srilankan fielder had to jump over the pickets and dive under the benches to fetch it himself! Reminded me of my school games!! No one to watch and no one to fetch and even if you wanted to travel to watch the games, there was no transport. A fitting tribute to the world’s greatest, most hyped, most marketed and most heavily sponsored cricketing event!!


Why can’t the rest compete?
“Why can’t a woman be more like a man” is a song that many of us love to sing even if no one is listening. And to anyone watching cricket the question seems to be “Why can’t anyone beat Australia in the World Cup”. Though the ICC is certainly not responsible for this, the rest of the cricketing nations are to blame I suspect not the least of them the two “fancied” teams from the sub-continent India and Pakistan who did not even qualify to play them. The last time Australia lost a World Cup game was to Pakistan in 1999, which is a sad indictment of the way the rest of the world is playing but it certainly robs the game of its charm and to a certain extent the viewership. Of course Australia seems to have certain unfair advantages. The rest of the teams seem to have bats while they have given Mathew Hayden a bludgeon. The other teams struggle to make 150 while they make 300 without breaking into a sweat. Teams like England play test cricket in the power plays while Australia plays twenty-twenty. My disillusioned friend threatened to carry this banner to St. Lucia. “Every team I have supported so far has lost…C’mon Australia”. Yes only Australia can save this World Cup. By losing at St. Lucia or at the wonderful new Kensington Oval at Barbados!!

The entertainment is on
By the time the matches in Barbados started the ICC realised a few of its errors. It allowed food and musical instruments; it let locals in free after 11 am. One got the flavour of watching cricket in the Caribbean. The steel bands and the trumpets were cheery even if the big ticket game between Ireland and Bangladesh was not. The locals were friendly, the Barmy Army was there in huge numbers and actually booed their team politely after their humiliating defeat to South Africa! Looks like there are still a few things we can learn from our erstwhile rulers! Indians had become reconciled to their team’s absence and the banners changed from “India rocks, team sucks” to “Come back India all is forgiven”. The ICC continued to insist on “Park and Ride’ which meant that your car was parked miles away and you would actually drive past the stadium in the bus so that you walked back a mile before you saw the game! The announcers continued to struggle with the pronunciation of Jayasuriya’s name and insisted on announcing that Simon Taufel was officiating in the game when it was Billy Bowden!! Things like these are unacceptable and speak of poor organisation. And yet the bands, the dancing girls, the constant flow of liquour in the stands, the party stands where people at the end of the day did not know who won the game, were all high points for those who had other interests in life! But to the cricket fan and more worryingly for the sponsors this has been a damp squib, so far and we have just two matches to go before it comes to a sorry end.


Post match analysis
I am sure some of the sponsors have been here and gone through what some of us have experienced and while we can joke about it, I think there are serious issues to be addressed before going forward. If you made your decision to sponsor based on the hype then you would be in the same boat as us, who made the decision to watch live based on nostalgia for the game. Execution on the ground, literally, is critical in an event of this nature. And here for instance I saw one of the sponsors, IOC, playing a Hindi commercial in Grenada in an Australia, Srilanka game where the ground was full of Aussies wearing green and yellow! When one can spend millions on a sponsorship, does it make sense to play the same commercial on the big screen in the West Indies that you play in ‘Kyunki? ‘Will sponsors do a serious cost benefit analysis of this entire exercise and admit they have egg on their faces? Instead of asking the channels for their money back can they do a more stringent probability analysis of our own team’s performance before they put in their not so hard-earned money on events like this? And can the ICC realise and accept that it is quickly killing the golden goose by having long, boring tournaments like this one?

P.S. Maybe Herschelle Gibbs will exorcise the ghosts of the past and single-handedly beat the Aussies tonight and save the ICC!

P.P.S. Tough luck Herschelle! Come on Murali, do something!

Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO of brand-comm.

Execution. What it is?

“5 days to go for the ICC World Cup 2007” says the ticker on my television screen. Yes it is World Cup time and even as I count the days left for my own trip to the Caribbean, my mind goes back to the several World Cups that I have been privileged to watch whether it has been in India, England or South Africa. But to my mind at least nothing can equal the 1999 World Cup for the sheer atmosphere provided by thousands of colourful and noisy Indian supporters, the amazing excitement the games provided and the sheer pleasure of watching cricket in England. What memories! The delirious pleasure of beating Pakistan again in a World Cup match and our muted celebrations as we were outnumbered two to one by Pakistani supporters. The sight of Kumble getting Flintoff out on the way to India’s famous win over England, the unforgettable image of Herschelle Gibbs dropping the World Cup at Old Trafford, Warne’s amazing bowling in the crunch games and that absolutely chaotic last over at Edgbaston when Allan Donald lost his head and South Africa the World Cup…Yes, amazing memories and I am coming to the business overs with great difficulty. A year later the Chairman of the English and Wales Cricket Board sent a letter thanking us for watching those matches, listing the itinerary for 2000 and inviting us to watch the matches. Now if that isn’t fantastic execution, I wonder what is? And even as we recall and appreciate wonderful execution and recognition of the individual consumer, it is perhaps useful to recall other instances where the execution, again in my experience, has been found wanting. I am not sure how many people read my column but irrespective of that I am not going to name these big brands and embarrass them. Let me merely mention their executional gaffes so that the wise men and women we are, we can learn from the mistakes of our brethren in the business.


Make mine a raitha
An old memory of mine continues to haunt me. I have written about it, spoken about it at seminars and shared it with my students as well. It is still worth repeating. (After all don’t we all have to learn). In those days I used to be a compulsive shopper (kindly note the use of past tense). It was therefore hardly surprising that I was one of the privileged customers of a large retail chain. The chain had an excellent loyalty programme in place. They remembered my birthday, my wedding anniversary, communicated special offers, tracked the recency of my purchase and wrote to me when I did not go to the outlet for some time. Fantastic CRM? Yes and yet there was a problem. Every single letter from them was addressed to “Sridhar Raitanujam”. I know that Ramanujam is a mouthful but there is very little I can do about it right now. Each loving letter infuriated me. Is this a great example of personalisation or a demonstration of how you can single out someone for persecution? And then I finally figured out the reason why. Maybe the retail chain had discovered my fondness for curds and curd related products and coined the appropriate name of Raitanujam for me! Why is poor execution causing so much ill-will and heartburn? Are companies and brands realising the extent of harm that poor execution can do? I am not sure they do. The execution saga continues. The same retail chain continues to mail me. (Persevering guys aren’t they?) A few days ago I got a mail from them saying that as a special customer I would get an opportunity to preview the special merchandise on offer in advance on the 16th of February 2007. Fantastic you say! Well I don’t see eye to eye with you on this. For the simple reason that I received the actual mailer on 28th of February 2007. Stumbling in the last executional mile! Again. And what probably is sadder is that clients may not even be aware that problems like these exist as one is not sure that the direct response agency will share executional glitches like these with clients. We had a similar experience several years ago when we were doing a massive direct mail programme for one of our clients in Pune. Hundreds of mailers were dumped by tired postmen in the unlikeliest of destinations. Our learning? Do not post all letters from the same post office. Is your organisation too suffering from poor execution? Worry about it. Keep monitoring. Tread on a few toes if you have to learn. And grow.

Mr ya Mrs?
Recently we bought an upmarket apartment in Bangalore. (If the prices are any indication every apartment in Bangalore is upmarket). Be that as it may it was bought in my wife’s name. (Unsubstantiated research suggests that in Indian households all the assets are bought in the wife’s name whilst all the borrowings are in the husband’s name and I wonder why I remember unnecessary trivia like this). In any case the builder has a CRM team who wanted to remember their customers in the New Year. An attractive card was sent to my wife from this reputed builder addressed to “Mr. Saroj and family”. While I was happy to be included in their greeting, I am not sure if my wife was thrilled by the prefix. Once again it is execution that worries me. Excellent thought to wish one’s customers for the New Year. Excellent to address them by name. But attention to detail? Execution? End result? Ask my wife.


Tune in to your customer
Contrast this with something that I read about some time ago. A customer was trading in his old car for a new one. As he drove out of the dealer outlet he discovered an outstanding truth. The radio in his new car had been tuned exactly the way his old car radio had been tuned. Channel I - weather, Channel II - news and so on. Clearly there was a delighted customer at the wheel. Again execution was key. And it is not some corporate office honcho who was doing this but a simple mechanic. So the learning here is simple. The importance of execution has to permeate the organisation. It must drive its operations. Executional excellence, really speaking holds the key to organizational success.

Knowing vs doing
We Indians pride ourselves on our knowledge (doesn’t matter even if some of what we know is trivia). We believe we have the potential to become a powerful knowledge economy. And yet one worries for companies. I am sure they all ‘know’ what is to be done. “Take care of your customer”, “Personalise”, “Customise your offering”, “Pay attention to detail”. These statements seem easier to talk and write about than to implement and practice. Companies need to ask themselves this “We all know we need to do a few things. Are we actually doing these things?” Yes doing. And doing it right is the future. Are you ready for the future?

The author is Ramanujam Sridhar, CEO of Brand-comm.