Nothing else ignites the passion of the masses in this country as this game does. During the year gone by India played 4 One Day International series, One at home and 3 abroad.
Today we look at how various brands utilized cricket as a medium to advertise.
The analysis focused on the GRPs accumulated by various brands on the different series. The TGs selected for TVR calculation is 15-44 Yrs / Males / Sec AB&C. In case of DD all homes has been chosen as the audience and for satellite channels only C&S homes have been taken into consideration. The data is for 9 cities and a cum for each series GRPs has been considered only for matches, which featured India. For DD both DD Sports and DD1 have been considered for GRP calculation.
A few statistics first: A total of 473 brands advertised on cricket in 2001 across all four series. These brands broadly fall into 114 categories and all of them put together consumed around 2.45 lac seconds on Live One Day cricket during the year. The number of spots totals to around 16,400.
BRAND WISE MEDIA USERS
Not surprisingly Pepsi was the largest advertiser on cricket with the game's viewer ship being in absolute syn with the brand's youth image. Pepsi accumulated close to 4500 TVRs across all series during the year with the maximum (around 55% of total) amount of GRPs coming from the India Australia series on DD. Pepsi was the lead sponsor of the series hence they bought heavily on the series. That combined with the fact that the series was screened on DD, where viewer ship is higher as compared to other channels, it turned out to be a bonanza for Pepsi.
(For all GRP figures refer to Chart 1 below and Chart 2 for duration)
Intel too bought heavily on the India Australia series since the Pentium 4 campaign was on full steam during that time. The brand accumulated close to 3500 GRPs during the year with almost 90% of that coming from that one series. In terms of duration though Intel had only 50% of its total secondage of 6100 Secs allocated to DD with the rest on Set Max on the India Sl series. Obviously the low viewer ship on Set Max as compared with DD generated only 10% of the total GRPs despite an allocation of 50% of the total secodage to the channel.
Chart 1 (Source TAM India)
Another heavy user of the Australia series was Allwyn, which again accumulated 90% of its total of 2100 GRPs from the series. For the full year though Allwyn was slotted at number 5 with Coke and Close Up occupying the number 3 and 4 slot.
Coca Cola was the lead sponsor for the India Sri Lanka tri series and not surprisingly the brand accumulated 40% if its total of 2300 GRPs from the series with the rest coming equally form the other series. Kinley, another Coke brand, used only the series on Set Max for advertising on cricket.
Close Up had a very interesting strategy. The brand accumulated almost all of its GRPs from the Ind SL series on Set Max as 95% of its GRPs came from the series. This is the only brand in the complete list, which has shown such liking for Set Max. Low cost of acquisition as compared to ESPN Star and a fit with the channel's audience seems to have prompted Close Up to use Set Max so heavily.
Chart 2
Apart from the biggies Pepsi and Coke, electronic goods manufactures too were heavy users of cricket. Samsung, Sansui, Kenstar and LG truly fall into that category.
Samsung used cricket to advertise two of its major products: Mobile Phones and TVs.
The company mostly used ESPN Star Sports when it came to cricket. The India SA series on Star brought close to 55% of its total GRPs of 2100 and another 37% came from the India Zimbabwe series on ESPN. With a total of 92% coming from ESPN Star the brand obviously stated its preference of channel very clearly. Another similar advertiser was Maruti, which didn't use DD or Set Max at all.
Home Trade the most high profile campaign of the previous year used only the India Australia series on DD as the initial campaign period coincided with the launch of the portal.
CATEGORY WISE MEDIA USERS
Since the two Soft Drink majors Pepsi and Coke were heavy users of cricket, Soft Drinks as a category was the largest advertiser on cricket. Close on the heels was White Goods (Includes Television, Refrigerators and Washing Machines), which accumulated around 7700 GRPs on cricket.
CATEGORY WISE USERS OF CRICKET
Chart 3
Tooth Pastes and Computers were the next largest advertisers with Cars and Jeeps at number 5. Though the number of categories which advertised on cricket last year totals to more than 100, the top 10 categories accounted for close to 50% of all GRPs accumulated.
This year too has started on a good note for cricket lovers with the current series against England in full blow. But on the advertising front Pepsi seems to be changing its focus as it pulled out from the lead sponsorship position. LG, which has taken over that role, still feels the game is good enough to make Indians go crazy.
Pepsi's move seems to have been prompted by the in the viewer ship numbers of the recently concluded India England Test series. And with advertisers complaining of high costs of advertising associated with the game we might just see a whole new breed of advertisers taking over from the biggies this year.
