Marketing Lessons From IPL For ISL In The 'Pandemic Scenario'

The Indian Super League entered its 7th year in 2020, the ultimate domestic footfall feast for football lovers who have their loyalties beyond EPL, La Liga, Serie A. Especially, certain parts of India which draw loyal audiences across markets like Bengal, North East, Goa, Kerala, Bengaluru, etc.

ISL was built on the lines of IPL or we can say with the same objective of nurturing the local talent with a mix of foreign internationals to ensure Indian Football reaches new heights.

This year is like no other, having locked everyone away. However, come August and our country witnessed a positive sequence of opening markets.

IPL and festive season were the “mood-lifters” and they certainly triggered the advertising spends and have been sustained by the pent-up demand in the market.

IPL 2020, festive season helped TV report highest ad volumes in last 5 years.

Regional Cable, which transmits more than 60% of TV Universe in India, a platform which is also considered a logical extension to Television Advertising, also witnessed a business splurge from August end.

A platform with a geotargeting edge, topical days around last few months saw huge demand, specifically set top box (STB) properties which are primarily channel agnostic. Brand present on IPL amplified their campaign through these STB solutions to ensure high frequency brand exposure across their marked markets.

Several new-age categories like Edu-tech, e-services, fintech, gaming and e-pharma jumped on the festive bandwagon with never-seen-before fervour, this year.

Overall, the key takeaways for advertisers and marketers from IPL 2020 are:

• Tactical Brand Associations across Teams

• Total shift in active categories 

• Vocal for Local 

• Platform based targeting across brands – OTT vs. Television

To seal the deal, total opening of markets coinciding with the most awaited last quarter, with festive season and big-ticket properties like IPL, Bigg Boss and Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) have led to business reaching some normalcy.

Presenting an exciting opportunity for the brands to optimised their advertising budgets to maximise the benefit.

Lockdown had frozen the markets leading to a sluggish trend. There was pent up energy on both sides; consumer demands and brand spend. When presented with this unique opportunity of having big ticket properties on TV during the festive season, brands clutched on to review the markets. Fortunately, the consumer demand has been very positive, and this has been a good season for advertisers as well.

Tactical Brand Presence or Associations across IPL Teams

In IPL we saw a clever tactical move, various smart deals have been cracked by multiple advertisers like multi-team association deals wherein rather than investing big and being main sponsors, brands are investing smartly on a wider bandwidth, which is then ensuring visibility across all matches. ISL can certainly draw catching up on this trend, specifically when there are clear market loyalties defined for this event. Local brand can become a part of bigger advertising league by doing smart association with ISL.

Total shift in active categories 

As compared to the previous years where we had categories like Auto, FMCG, BFSI and selective online players contributing majorly amongst top spenders for IPL.

2020 IPL saw a huge shift in categories drawing huge monies and eyeballs “Online: Edu-tech, ecommerce, Fintech, etc. to name a few. This digital dependency was boosted due to the Covid-19 Pandemic. Our nation was slowly but steadily adapting to the digital way with Fintech and ecommerce paving its way through the major cities and now connecting beyond metros, the current situation made it further mandatory for everyone to “learn and adapt” to the digital way of life. From banking, shopping and work going online to now school, tuitions, hobbies, vocational courses now being easily available at finger tips. Around 40% of total FCT consumed during IPL was the online category. We can assume the same shift for online fashion brands associations with the North East team, as fashion is big in the Northeast. Male grooming brands can explore this opportunity to connect with consumers across certain priority markets.

Vocal for Local 

Unlike global brands, the spending pockets of the locally aspiring brands are limited; which put these advertisers in a situation to make smart media or promotion choices.

Like buying a spot/sponsorship was not feasible for these emerging brands, and it was a big opportunity missed in these resurgence period.

IPL enabled a lot of local brands to have one platform to reach out to their varied set of audiences at once. Unlike previous years, this year there were a lot of small brands that were able to utilise the platform as Star India’s offerings on both TV as well as their OTT platform inclined towards avenues to advertise other than FCT – features package and packages for only a few days of IPL, among others.

Brands which found it difficult to leverage the IPL because of high inventory prices were now able to invest in these smart cost-efficient packages.

Some of the highest spending categories have been gaming, auto, consumer durables, wallets, education and mobile phones, laying the ground for the festive season, as well.

Platform based targeting across brands – OTT vs. TV

This IPL we saw OTT platform level deals cracked by certain high-end advertisers who were never a part of regular advertising.

Bigger FMCG, Auto brands focused their certain brands did OTT platform level tie-ups for Live Telecast, Highlights, special packages & so on.

New Online Start-ups targeted these OTT platforms to get noticed in this digital era.

IPL saw clear bifurcation of advertisers on TV & OTT platform.

ISL aspirant advertisers can surely take this lesson of platform-based targeting focusing on markets like Kerala, Bengaluru have better OTT platform penetration clubbed with their brand priority markets.

The industry has seen a complete shift even in the way advertisers interact with the consumers, with digital paving its route to connect the brands to the end users by geotargeting, bigger advertisers are also adapting to this smart way and looking at options to slice and dice and deliver the message to the end consumer. Terms like performance marketing, ROI, minimum spillage, Geotargeting are of significance.

This pandemic and the unprecedented times have helped brands re-think a lot of their strategies, spends and messaging to win customers back.

With the enormous achievement impact of the big bonanza - IPL in these tough times, it’s time for ISL advertisers to follow the suit.

Sharad Alwe

Guest Author An acknowledged media visionary, Sharad is an industry veteran with 30 years of experience in media, TV distribution, fiber and broadband services, and advertising.