Comments on: Sport or Cinema: which is a safer bet for brand endorsement?

By: vivek kamath

vivek kamath — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 05:45:34 +0000

lucky, this is a longish comment. please bear up.

on cricket, my view is the money will move from individual endorsements to team ownership, especially with ipl offering this option.

individual endorsements in sport will be the preserve of a select few. dhoni, yuvraj, sachin and perhaps, harbhajan in cricket;during ipl season, a couple of international cricketers like flintoff and brett lee may get a couple of brands; deepika pallikal, saina nehwal and somdev devvarman may get some traction if they perform well in their respective sports.

movie stars will continue to get endorsements. i don’t really agree with your point about movie stars coming with fixed personas and sport stars being more flexible. in fact, movie stars wear personas for a living. if a star’s movie fails, you can still separate their ads from their films. when an athlete fails, you can only see a failed athlete in the ad.

during one series some time ago, ganguly was not playing for fitness reasons. and the breaks carried his chyavanprash ad. during one grand slam tournament, sania lost in the second or third round and her tata tea campaign continued up the finals. sriram iyer’s point about the media planner’s role is very valid. i wonder if the media agency gets to view the ad prior or they just ship it to hong kong and watch it on tv with the rest of us.

By: Adrian Stefanoiu

Adrian Stefanoiu — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:39:41 +0000

98% of world population loves music… if you ask me, i would say music is the safest .

By: sari

sari — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:54:46 +0000

“Kuch or main” I saw all serial replay’s..thanks to our team who didn’t want me to miss that.

And yes that Docomo tune wala ad was a sigh of relief to us…only this could swing my niece mood. Vaisey it’s the easiest way for an agency to spend all the Paisa.
Media planners : We have to plan the best way to utilise this budget. How about the cricket match.. Faayda?? ..who cares. Ok so where’s the party tonight.

Agree with this Short memory syndrome..aakhir umeed pay duniya kaayam hai..Indian team playing at its best when expected most

By: ashwin

ashwin — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:51:45 +0000

The trick is to pick up the right kind of properties in sport…the BPL replay, the 50:50 logo on the third umpire screen etc are a probably better properties than betting on players….but that said…the glorious uncertainties of cricket is what makes the sport so irresistible to a viewer….combine that with the short public memories….and you’ll have eyeballs coming back for more when Sri lanka come in for the next series.

By: bhatnaturally

bhatnaturally — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:47:08 +0000

Valid point Sririam. The format of the game allows for ads every 5 minutes which when abused may become counter productive.

By: Sriram Iyer

Sriram Iyer — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:33:14 +0000

I want to add another point, besides brand endorsements by cricketers & movie stars. Media planners in my opinion should prolly use a bit of common sense. In the on-going ODI – the Docomo TVC, singing the tune wala, is played atleast well over 20-25 times per hour. And multiply that over a single game and over the entire series. I like the ad, but it gets highly irritating when you’re subjected to it at the end of each over.

I found the same irritation with Max Newyork life insurance TVC, “Sanju wala ad” during IPL 1. The ad is pretty good. But once you play it over & over & over again withing an hour – the viewers gets pretty disgruntled.

It’s amazing how these small little things, if done carefully can help in the long run. The creatives might be excellent, but if you ‘rakhi sawantize’ it. Not good.