Breathless and no longer bubbly

“Hello, Can I speak to Saurav, please?”

“I’m sorry, he’s just gone in to bat”.

“Cool. I’ll hold on.”

This is one of many jokes doing the e-mail and SMS rounds. And when such jokes abound about your brand ambassador, it’s time for companies such as Pepsi, LG, Tata Indicom and Hero Honda to get up and smell the coffee.

This is not about Saurav Ganguly, the cricketer; it’s about Saurav Ganguly, the brand ambassador. While the selectors of the Indian cricket team and the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s Jagmohan Dalmiya may not be writing the Indian captain off yet, the writing is on the wall: Ganguly is finished as a celebrity endorser. This is where we come back to Ganguly, the cricketer. The very reasons that product managers made a beeline for the Bengal Tiger are now in tatters: scintillating performances, an aura of confidence, iconic leadership. As in all sports, a star can go through a lean patch, and a lean patch is no reason for a brand or a company to write Ganguly off. But the problem is that it is no longer a patch, but an entire stretch. And as the trend continues, the fans begin to write him off. Getting back to cricket, let’s take a quick look at the statistics for the just concluded India-Pakistan series.

In the recent tests during the India-Pakistan home series, Ganguly averaged 9.60, slightly above Harbhajan Singh and Lakshmipathy Balaji: not a consideration set that you are used to seeing Ganguly in. And in the one-day series, his performance is even worse. In fact, the only “batsman” he outdoes being Ashish Nehra. Is 79 runs in 9 innings a bad patch or a frightening trend? What about his strike rate — the lowest in the series in both versions of the game?

To brands that Ganguly endorses, it means that they receive considerably less exposure to logos than they have bargained for. It also means when he’s at the crease, television viewers are first praying he rediscovers his “form” and then hoping he gets the hell out of there. And finally, (not too long later) when he gets out, the knives are out. Each time a commercial featuring Ganguly interrupts the cricket, it is a stark reminder of his failure earlier in the day. And when Ganguly fails, his endorsed brands do so as well.

There is a thin line that separates fame from infamy, celebrity-hood to villain-hood. And Ganguly has crossed that thin line. But for those who’ve signed him on, cricket is obviously seen through very different eyes. LG, for example, still sees him as a winner. Salil Kapoor, Head Marketing at the electronics major, feels, “The situation has not changed; every player goes through a rough patch. As a brand, Ganguly is still the same, a great brand as earlier and he is one of the finest strategists of the game. We should not reach any premature conclusions.”

To read the entire story, grab your copy of Impact Advertising and Weekly magazine issue dated April 25-May 1, 2005