Heavy advertising during the Indian Premier League 2019 triumphs over team and tournament sponsorship, according to a recently released study by research company Velocity MR.
The agency has launched ‘IPL Brands Insights Book’, which uncovers insights and trends on the role of branding and value creation during the tournament.
In terms of generating a better brand recall, Swiggy and PhonePe, the two heavily advertised brands while not associated with a particular team, saw their total awareness had gone up by 8 and 10 per cent respectively.
According to the report, the best option seems to be to go solo and not associate with any IPL team - these brands generated a steady increase in its recall and other parameters and were not affected by the daily happenings in the IPL. Since the ads are shown for all the matches, it allows long term exposure to the audience as compared to brands which are associated with particular teams. The recall increases even during the middle weeks of IPL when generally the viewership of IPL is seen to be dropping.
According to the research, Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians are the teams brands should target and associate with, if they are looking for nationwide presence. CSK have a nationwide presence of 76 per cent, while MI's nationwide reach is 66 per cent.
In England, PaddyPower recently ran a campaign which called for sponsors to stop 'bastardising' football shirts, but the study reveals that the front-center position on the jersey is fruitful for brands with an average recall of 53 per cent. The brands that stayed above the average percentage for brand recall are Nokia for KKR (64 per cent), Samsung for MI (61 per cent) and Muthoot for CSK (57 per cent).
It also revealed that backing the right team for sponsors is extremely important. Nokia which had an overall brand recall of 64 per cent, garnered over 50 per cent increase in top of mind recall when the team embraced victories, but their top of the mind recall dropped by 25 per cent when the team lost six matches consecutively.
When it comes to total impact score of IPL teams, CSK, MI, KKR and SRH take the top four positions. RCB scores maximum in average brand recall (0.16 - the best across all the IPL teams), which proves the popularity of the team over social media and ads plays a big part in gaining viewership which in turn gives better brand recall to the brands associated with that team.
Among the frequent viewers, it is found that the most watched matches involved three teams – CSK (9.5), MI (9) and RCB (9).
Jasal Shah, managing director and CEO, Velocity MR, said, “IPL is no doubt the biggest sports and marketing extravaganza by far for Indians at home and around the world. With the high stakes for this tournament, we felt the need to study the impact of advertising campaigns and branding during this event."
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