IPL and Marketing Brutes

April 26, 2009

The Indian Premier League or the IPL is what seems to be on everybody’s minds these days in India, apart from the colourful bevy of candidates standing to win despite criminal records and/ or Bollywood movies on their resume during these general elections. Now the IPL, like the English Premier League, is an exciting whip up of cricketers from around the globe put in teams supported by the big daddies of Indian business. What attracts a marketing person to this extravaganza of splurge is that though the ‘sport’ factor is pushed to the background, it boasts of some tough, bouncer-like marketing brutes in the business.

It is completely understandable that events such as the IPL are a big catch for pitching one’s company and its products. But this time around, the condition is one of marketing overdrive to the hilt and above. Every cricketer wears clothes that are hardly different from the teams, as they are plastered with logos and punch lines of companies all over their jerseys leaving very little room for any kind of colour to seep out to register in the minds of viewers. The helmets, gloves, pads are not spared either. At the end of it all, the couture ends up looking like the ruins of battle ground of marketing pros who fought over how many square inches the ideal size of the logo should be, the strategic placement and how the cricketer should not wear any other clothing over the jersey as per contract, even if it was a raincoat! I imagine the argument would have to be a breathless one.

I do however fail to understand the kill the advertisers aim at making from the investment. For instance, I wonder if an average sports guy trying to watch a replay would be thrilled to hear the name of company prefixed to super shot, when in fact it was a sixer or a boundary. Or, for that matter, if the logos on the jerseys would have recall value. Trust me when I say that some companies with long names in the company logos tend to make a viewer disinterested in reading it after the first three letters! I believe the scene at the grounds in South Africa (where it is being hosted) is not very different. With stalls of companies sponsoring the events… oops, partnering the event, calling out to sports fans with beer, caps, flags and the jamboree, I reckon the event to be more of a fest, a mela as we say here. May be the fringes are what is attracting the crowd that’s turning up for the matches, which are otherwise lacklustre.

One of the funniest portions of these IPL matches is during the presentation ceremony, after the 20-20 match is over. The ‘Man of the Match’ trophy that is given out to the outstanding player of that particular match is something where the audience tries guessing the name that would be called out to get another cheque (which looks more like a poster for a trade fair), and probably the keys to a motorbike. The presentation party on the dais resembles the congregation for a G20 Summit lined up for a group photograph. Make no mistake, this is another marketing exercise, which no rep wants to leave out, and ensures that he/ she has the company CEO up on the stage, even if the name is mis-pronounced or given a wrong gender title! Now, I would like to talk to the sponsoring parties who have given out the MoM tropies to understand their metrics of calculating RoI. What is most depressing is when the team owner of the losing team has to hand over the trophy to the player of the rival team. Does it still remain a marketing exercise or help build brand? I am still trying to figure it out.

The IPL matches are underway and the marketing excesses have been out for all to see. Without trying to sound risqué, these professionals are quite the sons of guns when it comes to plastering the company names on anybody that even remotely has a chance of being covered by the cameras! As the scrips of the companies that have sponsored have not exactly sky-rocketed on the markets, I am hoping there has been an appreciation of some other sort, at least to cover the shredded venture that it would turn out to be at the end of the cricket cabaret.

Metro Madness

Much has been written, discussed, debated, praised and shredded about India. Indian nationals, who have been ‘patriotic’ to their “motherland”, have expressed their views more frequently than the appearance of a turban in Jaisalmer. Be it about how rich the nation is with its cultural heritage, religious diversities and patriots; or the rising behemoth of an economy, intellectual capital and the innumerable hands that build IT parks all over the metros. One metro that gets inevitably featured in such contexts is Bombay… sorry, Mumbai… let’s call it Bombay… no, it is now Mumbai… whatever!

The map of Mumbai looks like a fossilized snake from the Mesozoic Age. Despite various demerits, the city attracts people in drones in the same way it multiplies the number of slum dwellers, diseases and street side hawkers.

The past few days for a Mumbai dweller have been action-packed. Even plump housewives and their pot bellied husbands have been literally half mooned by an invisible force of the city to get their lazy bones, on the verge of osteoporosis, out of their warm couches. The city has been swept away in a deluge of celebrations. Fortunately, this time around rain has no part in it!

Ganesh Utsav heralds and celebrates the benevolence and grandeur of the elephant headed God. In Mumbai, the festivities celebrated for over 2 weeks resemble a fête with a string of drums played to successfully damage ear drums of human beings up to 10 miles. Those who play them, of course, do not fall under this category.

What would a procession be without explosive lighting equipment? My answer- a normal one. But the city apparently differs with me as I happened to encounter an idol illuminated by 10 suns. Or so it seemed for a small crowd that had temporarily spared themselves the gift of blindness by shutting their eyes as tight as Catwoman’s leather outfit. Participants, organizers and the crowd gathered have this compulsive need to prove that culture is not being eroded in the midst of all this hoopla. The best way to demonstrate it to all the TV cameras trained on them – spray colors of red, pink and orange in the air, on faces and sometimes on an odd clueless tourist with a digital camera. That the tourist will have to buy a new camera is totally irrelevant, though. Crackers, group of people dancing in trance or under influence, form yet another aspect of this spectacle.

A 15 day religious carnival of sorts comes to an end with the idol immersion in the sea, rivulet or even a large rain-water collected pond- depending on the size of the idol. Nobody really bothers about the day after. The municipal corporation which is mostly visible on such days turns up in huge vans to clear roads, alleys and beaches. As for the political sponsors, who have a field day at garnering awe and exposure find it most convenient to leave it to the cleaners or just harsh weather to clear their banners that hang from post to post. They seem to strictly believe in division of labor and specialization!

All the above would have been just fine had it been yet another uneventful year. But India also spins into frenzy whenever there is talk of a game adopted from the colonial times – Cricket. Such excitement is, therefore, completely unexpected when the team, which has been out of form since a very long time, loses and returns home. Effigies are burnt, roads are blocked for a day, and some underperformers’ houses are either pelted or blackened to mourn the loss without much pomp.

Now what happens when such a team goes to a new format World Cup and wins the Championship Trophy during the very same week as the Ganesh Utsav? For starters, offices close early, people find time from religion, stock market and household banter and honor sports channels giving high TRPs for re-runs of the same match. Channels start recruiting more people to cover both events and the Programming Executive spends sleepless nights on prioritizing the two events! Crackers bought for the festival are burst to serve dual purpose and processions to celebrate both the events get inflated by the participants’ heads. The stock market soars to all time highs while speculators keep figuring what next.

For the otherwise crowded streets of this metro, double barreled events bring with them more substance, content, coverage, noise and many more traffic jams. People swing from street to street hoping for more reasons to rationalize the purpose and find company for such insanity. I call it the Mumbai metro madness.

(September 26, 2007)