‘Post the IPL TV campaign, viewers started associating upGrad with specialization’

2020 was rightly the year of Ed-tech in India. Players in the field latched on to the opportunity to bolster their presence in every way, advertising included. Needless to say that IPL 2020 which breathed life into television advertising last year became imperative for them. In a sea of brands catering to K12 learning and competitive exams, online higher education platform upGrad stood out with its positioning and a clutter-breaking campaign, ‘Sirf naam ki nahi, kaam ki degree’.

IPL 2020 which saw a 23 percent rise in TV viewership (over 2019) with a staggering 31.57 million average impressions was upGrad’s first major sports association. Commenting on the objective and challenges that needed to be addressed through the IPL television campaign, Arjun Mohan, CEO – India, upGrad says, “Ed-tech in India has been synonymous with K12 learning and competitive exams. Although a large and growing business, higher education does not have similar reach and awareness yet. Last year, we were clear in our objective to take our brand positioning from niche to mainstream. With the revolutionary New Education Policy which has accorded autonomy, a multi-disciplinary approach, and flexibility to higher education, we thought it was just the right time for a strategic partnership with Star which will enable us with the right platform to reach out to our TG residing in the remotest corners of ‘Bharat’.”

The main considerations that led Mohan to choose IPL as upGrad’s launch pad to ‘Bharat’ were ‘reach’, and ‘reach within its target group’. “IPL is the largest among all cricketing properties in India. Its reach is, no doubt, unparalleled, but as we wanted to take our brand mainstream in a very short duration, we had to be focused on our TG which includes students and working professionals – mostly the youth - looking at upskilling with graduate and post-graduate courses from reputed colleges and universities. IPL is one platform which brings them all together, maybe even as a family.”

upGrad, along with its agency partner The Womb, spent a lot of time studying this TG to come up with the ‘Sirf naam ki nahin, Kaam ki degree’ campaign. Talking about the insight behind the TVC, Mohan shares, “Being associated with working professionals who are our core TG, the idea of flattering bosses for advancing in one's career was a regular theme that kept popping up in conversations, so we decided to create the campaign around it. Irrespective of whether people found the cheeky creative likeable or jarring, it definitely made people notice our brand.”

In addition to the TVC which was the main element of upGrad’s IPL campaign, the brand also invested in parallel properties on the digital platform, particularly in the form of strategically timed and contextualized branded content, to further the impact. Mohan however says that since his objective was to position upGrad as mainstream, having a television presence on IPL was a must. “We are at a tipping point right now. Given the growing relevance of OTT platforms in the metros and our objective of mainstreaming upGrad we thought television advertising on IPL will be the most effective strategy for us if we want to reach the smaller towns.”

Adding a note on why he thinks IPL offers a superior reach qualitatively, he further states, “The fact that ad breaks are more structured and shorter, makes people switch on the television in the first place and also hold on to space.”

Coming to the impact of the campaign, according to Mohan, it ‘over-delivered’ on all metrics. Talking of the ROI in terms of CPL (Cost per Lead), he says, “The effectiveness of the creative and IPL’s reach together ensured that it was lesser than that for GECs.” “The leads that come to our properties – the app and website – follow a particular pattern depending on the time of the day, week, or after we do a certain online campaign. To measure the effectiveness of a TV campaign we take into account the increment from the baseline medium. This increment is then used to calculate CPL. Over a period of time, we have invested in various television properties. My expectation with IPL was to arrive at a CPL close to that of GECs or other TV properties. Given the high spot price, I thought it will be tough, but surprisingly, it turned out to be lower,” he elaborates.

There was also an overall increase in social media conversations around upGrad. “Our online traffic and leads almost doubled in the initial period because of the novelty factor. On the business side, we grew by almost 100% in six months. In March 2020, we had 500,000 learners associated with the platform. Within three quarters the number reached 1 million. This is a testimony to the fact that IPL really helped us make inroads into newer domains.”

With this momentum and its growth plans, upGrad forecasts impacting the career of the next one million youth and working professionals within the coming 18 months, while targeting INR 2500 crore in revenue for FY’22. 

In addition to delivering on the business goals, the TV campaign also led to a “dramatic shift” in viewers’ perception of the brand, of course a positive one. “Our research shows that post the IPL TV campaign, viewers started associating upGrad with specialization. While an increase in metrics such as awareness and recall was expected, this development was nothing short of ‘dramatic’. But we will have to persist to be sure this stays on,” shares Mohan.

Commenting on the strategy for the future, he reiterates, “We were clear that for our audience in metros, access to good colleges and awareness about online higher education is not a problem area. It is the youth in Tier II towns who will be considering an online degree because the quality of education in their cities is not that great. And yet, the idea of attending college physically is most ingrained in their minds. To bring about a shift in this attitude is a long-term task. The reason behind our associating with IPL was to build trust for the online mode of education in tier II markets.”

He signs off with a word of advice for brands to be similarly clear about their objectives while considering an IPL association.