Inka Paisa Le Lo...

Back in the 80s, when there used to be only about 40 days of live cricket telecast on television in a year, one used to look forward to every game as if one’s life depended on it. Ask any cricket fan who has seen the 1983-1992 period, a decade when Indian cricket was on the rise, and he’ll give you vivid descriptions of many, many matches from that era. Including the team line-ups, specific batting and bowling performances, catches, the works. But ask a cricket fan today to recall more than three champagne moments from the last IPL, and he’ll struggle. Indeed, too much of everything is bad. Or is it?

Certainly, one Mr Lalit Modi is not complaining. Neither are the cricketers. And viewers change a generation every 4-5 years, so they have no reference points of days when an ordinary ODI used to be a big deal for the country.

But what about the advertisers? Has the cricket explosion in the last decade helped them? Some of the more visible IPL advertisers have spent upwards of Rs 400 million on IPL alone, and will spend another equal amount on cricket rest of the year. And because they do it, their competition has to do the same too. As a result, we have all the telecom players, handset makers and aerated drink makers on IPL. It’s intriguing when you think of it. Because advertising on IPL makes you want to believe that cricket viewers spend more than 50 per cent of their money on either talking on a mobile phone or drinking colas.

If we didn’t have the IPL, where would this Rs 400 million per advertiser have gone? My guess is that part of it would have been spent across other television platforms. And a significant part of it would have been a saving on the marketing budget. Because IPL, like most things packaged well, comes at a premium.

Because the stakes are big and the money riding on IPL runs into several crores, advertisers tend to be wary of their ‘IPL strategy’. Choices of sponsorships and innovations, creative strategy, scheduling strategy and all other planning knick-knacks come into play. But then, we know that 80 per cent of all advertising is bad. Bad as defined by the consumer, not by us. This is getting clearly validated during our Day After Cricket study this IPL.

At the end of a cricket viewing day, the consumer’s mind can only absorb a defined amount of stimuli. Hence, survival of fittest has to be the norm. Thus, out of the 85 brands tracked this year, only about 15-20 have been able to make any impact whatsoever in terms of recall or likeability or both. Almost 70 are also-rans – brands spending crores to buy the same ineffectiveness they could have bought in lakhs.

Yet, they will continue to advertise heavily on cricket and the next IPL. Why? Because either they will never know that they didn’t benefit from this one (ignorance is bliss). Or because they will hope to make amends in the next one (fair enough). Or because the owner of the company wants to be associated with IPL (compelling argument). Or because the top management loves cricket and thinks everyone watches only IPL during those 45 days (an even more compelling argument).

End of it all, one has to take their hats off and tell Mr Modi to take a bow. He has created one of the biggest success stories in sporting history, not just in India but the world, out of thin air. But he also reminds me of the bloke who steals your car’s insignia at one traffic signal, only to sell it back to you at the next. And even as you buy it back well knowing the truth, you can’t stop marvelling: “How enterprising!”

(Shailesh Kapoor is the Co-founder and Director of Ormax Media, a company specialising in consumer research in the media and entertainment industry. Ormax Media’s syndicated study Day After Cricket measures the recall and likeability of IPL advertising.)