The IPL was well marketed?

This is a report that I wrote for the course 'Consumer Behavior', one that I am quite proud of, so, thought of recording here. The report had to incorporate consumer behavior concepts to answer the question - The IPL was well marketed?

Introduction:

Cricket, pre IPL era was a little staid and long, appealing mostly to young men primarily in the sub continent. It had lost its appeal to the Englishmen and the West Indians except for some iconic series like the Ashes. But post IPL, we have an entirely new breed of supporters who have embraced the game, its many differences with the more athletic counterparts still notwithstanding. 

How has IPL managed to do it? It managed to bring together cricketers from different nationalities, lured them with fat pay cheques, roped in big advertisers who do not think twice before splurging on their brands for prime time eye space, got cheer leaders to shake their hips and bulldozed its way into ICC’s calendar. Thus, by a judicious mixture of managing the environment nearly perfectly and staging fantastic experiences every time a match was played, value creation was no more, the prerogative of a single entity. Instead, multiple stakeholders came together on a mutually rewarding platform and lavished the cricket loving crowds with some truly memorable fare. 

Cashing in on the need for change:

Any product, service or even an experience cannot have a sustaining appeal in the market place unless it addresses some specific needs of the consumer. IPL was able to gauge that the large number of cricket fans no longer wanted to spend a day in front of the television for an ODI encounter not to forget five days for a test match. When the target customers are busy, it is better to cater to their lifestyle change by shortening the game innovatively. The twenty over format already existed. IPL brought the model of clubs as in the EPL and by deft packaging created a customer experience that was too tempting for the customer to resist. The business was not one of selling twenty over cricket matches to cricket fans; rather it was selling an experience of 3.5 to 4 hours to a much larger entertainment deprived public. 

This was one of the reasons why IPL attracted viewers of every age and in young women and house wives brought to cricket, a whole new swathe of followers. The adrenalin rush inherent in the shortened version of the game was exploited by roping in celebrities, cheer leaders, glamorous hosts and a hint of CSR while all along, sending out the right impressions – encouraging small town cricket players to dream big and providing them a chance to interact with acclaimed super stars.  The result was that whole families came together every evening to cheer for their favourite teams, emotions ran high and the advertisers almost got a captive audience (of course, at a very high price) since the excitement in a twenty twenty format was too high for anyone to switch channels during over breaks. 

The IPL Experience:

In ‘Welcome to the experience economy’ by B Joseph Pine and James H Gilmore, the authors emphatically declare that we have arrived into the experience economy after crossing agrarian, goods-based industrial and services economy eras. In the authors’ opinion, “to realize the full benefit of staging experiences, however, businesses must deliberately design engaging experiences that command a fee”.

As opposed to commodities, goods and services, experiences are deeply personal and reside in the minds of the individual who has been engaged as a memorable remnant. IPL has been able to leverage this to its benefit by throwing in something into the experience that everyone who sees the match can relate to and find joy in. Be it the celebrity stars, foreign players, post match fashion shows, social initiatives, favourable commentaries from experts of the game, Bollywood superstars, attractively packaged memorabilia – everyone had something to look forward to and precisely because of this, everyone’s individual experience and joy was starkly different from another person’s. Thus IPL challenged its competitors at a completely different plane by successfully staging memorable experiences. 

By adopting the model of movie theatres that have begun to charge for consumer experiences instead of simply for the ticket, IPL also managed to include in its ticket price and in its advertising slot rates, value for experience thus creating a very high anchor successfully right from the very first edition. Once the initial anchor is set, it is not very difficult to incrementally hike fares and still remain credible in the eyes of the consumer from the pricing point of view. 

Along two dimensions of experiences – customer participation and connection – IPL would fit into the quadrant where both active participation and immersion are high. As viewers, people hold the belief that their loud cheering and appreciation for their teams can sway results. They are also completely immersed in the proceedings right from the first over of the first innings. 

Customers also have an idea of what to expect from an IPL encounter – high adrenalin action. Basing the whole experience on the theme of enjoying cricket has given IPL a focal point around which to organise its other activities. By providing ample positive cues to reinforce indelibly, the first impressions in the form of blaring music between overs and media focus and sound bites from foreign players, IPL has managed to ensure that even the smallest cues are paid attention to. 

The popularity of the IPL can be gauged from the number of people who routinely wear t-Shirts and jerseys that espouse their support to favourite teams even during non season times. This is in large measure due to the array of attractive memorabilia that are sold in shops through the year. Once a city based loyalty is induced in a customer, it is very hard to be shaken by subsequent editions for in sport, there is a joy in rooting for the underdog. It gives the consumer of the experience, the joy of feeling belonged in a group. Peer approval and social norms as dictated by a person’s neighbour, for example, influence him/her to spend on these memorabilia and sport them proudly as a badge of his/her support to a particular team. 

“The more senses an experience engages, the more effective and memorable it can be.” Blaring crowds undulating to the sounds of drum music by a Sivamani, the sight of huge swathes of people decked in attractive jerseys and the almost palpable smell of thrill/victory/defeat combine together to produce the right balance of sensations. 

Innovation as the mantra:

Business standard in an article titled “IPL: The $2 bn brand”, refers to IPL occupying the 22^nd position in the list of most innovative companies compiled by Fast company, a magazine that reports on innovation and digital media, ahead of giants like Samsung and Microsoft. 

Some elements of IPL’s marketing strategy can be said to revolutionize the field of marketing experiences and entertainment -

•  Screening of IPL matches in movie halls
• Complete use of all social media channels – this helped strike the right chord with the youth who normally take the first steps to know more about any format and who tend to book tickets online. 
• Twitter – www.twitter.com/ipl 
• Facebook - www.facebook.com/IPL
• YouTube live streaming channel - www.youtube.com/user/IPL
• Online fan club - www.thecricfanclub.com
• Banner ads
• Wikipedia page - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Premier_League
• Official site - www.iplt20.com
• Online booking for all matches
• A mind boggling number of tie ups – To name a few, yatra.com with Delhi Daredevils, EBay with Kings XI Punjab...
• The leveraging of immense unpaid publicity by word-of-mouth and other means
• Adopting a well tried model of international clubs and auctions to the Indian environment and making it a grand success
• Innovative deals with a number of companies where the structure of the deal includes a onetime licensing fee as well as royalties on the merchandise sold. Other examples: Deals with Google for people to watch matches online and with television channels for IPL related shows.
• The sheer number of brands that were associated with IPL (In edition 3, the number is expected to touch 80)! Brands that had multiple associations and were involved with cricket through the year gained more out of IPL lending credence to the standard marketing thought that “more the presence, more the impact”
• Launch of several new and innovative campaigns by advertisers through IPL. Examples: Idea (Oongli cricket) and Vodafone (Zoozoos) 

Learning perspective:

In ‘Managing what consumers learn from experience’ by Stephen J Hoch and John Deighton, the authors propose a framework of four stages – hypothesizing->Exposure->encoding->Integration – with three moderating factors – familiarity to learn, motivation to learn and the ambiguity of the information environment – to capture what consumers learn from experiences.  

IPL by virtue of its gripping nature and a high value based price offered a high-involvement experience for the consumer. Since “consumers tend to grant special status to conclusions drawn from experience” and experience also “promotes better memory because information is more vivid and concrete”, any consumer who watches a IPL match either on television or on the playing field by paying for the tickets experiences entertainment that reinforces the outcome he intended in the first place. IPL managed to do this with a deft and balanced packaging of the different elements on offer as part of the experience. 

Consumers in post purchase situations tend to avoid dissonance inducing information. After spending a good deal of money on the cricket field or worse still, a large amount of time in front of the television set, the human behaviour is to rationalise the money or time spent by justifying it as worthwhile. Hence consumers consciously avoid situations in which they might potentially receive negative feedback about IPL and instead surround themselves with people who “confirm a good buy” by lavishing praise on the concept. 

A contrarian viewpoint:

IPL, for sure, managed to bring in more audiences to a game that was increasingly bemoaned as a sport out of tune with the changing and evolving times. In the process however, it alienated a section of cricket loving population that was rooted in the traditional/classical school to whom, the sport best evokes memories of a “gentleman’s game”. The aggressive marketing strategies followed by the different clubs, the muscle power that BCCI brought to the centre with its rich and wealthy line-up and the induction of glamour as an associated activity in the form of fashion shows and cheer leaders were not received well by this traditional and puritan section of the population.  

The strategies employed were at times seen even by supporters of the format as harming the interests of the players resulting in more injuries. The outcome of many of these games were driven by chance many a time leading some to cast aspersions on the extent of skill required to come out on top. To this section, the marketing efforts expended by popular brands was symbolic of aligning with interests contravening the larger right direction, the game should be taken in. 

Conclusion:

Examining both sides of the coin, one comes to the conclusion that the IPL was extremely well marketed. Right from the choice of the name – Indian premier league – having a streak of nationalism to countless secondary associations that were successfully leveraged, IPL as an annual calendar event is extremely well marketed. The increasing crowds in the stadium, the cross border popularity of the T20 format, the numerous foreign players who are willing to sign up, the increasing auction amounts, the rise in the number of franchises catering to more cities and the craze for IPL memorabilia are all pointers to the ever increasing popularity standing testimonies to shrewd marketing strategies. 

Business Standard in an article way back in 2008 termed IPL as “The new marketing cocktail”. To quote from the article, “on a jingoistic note, it (IPL) could be an Indian "brand" export to the world”.

Indian ODI team begins a new chapter

Winning against Sri Lanka at home is no easy task. They are essentially a team that has some crafty spinners who can roll their arms, in what has over a long period of time, appeared to the touring nations, as pitches tailor-made to suit the home team!

Statistics don’t lie – this is the first time an Indian ODI team has won a bilateral series in the island nation. It’s all the more remarkable given the circumstances in which the team achieved the series victory.

Crushed in the test series, appearing to have no clues to the wily turn of Mendis, one thought the team would take the road that our countrymen are so well aware of! But in a surprising turnaround, apart from wining three matches on the trot, every win was progressively decisive and for once it wasn’t individual brilliance but collective effort that did the trick.

Playing without Sachin, Saurav, Dravid, Laxman and Sehwag, when world attention was focused on the erstwhile unimaginable joy that we were witness to in Beijing where we managed to grab one gold and two bronze, when television channels and newspapers amazingly commented that Olympics is getting more viewer ship than cricket, this series victory is all the more sweet.

We can take heart from the fact that after a long time, our team has a prospective and potentially dangerous bunch of youngsters who are raring to go and who thankfully don’t find themselves limited by a captain who has to please his peers and hence finds his choices limited.

The media has also pretty much found Kirsten a difficult customer for the gossip and rumor mills. He has been allowed to focus on his job and fortunately got a young side that features almost none of his contemporaries. Hence the question of ego clashes did not arise.

Dhoni has emerged as a leader who leads by example. Indeed, but for his crucial knock of 35+ in the low scoring second one dayer, we would have lost that too after the dispirited performance from our batsmen in the first game. Raina and Kohli have risen up to the big occasion and have demonstrated that they belong in the big stage. Raina has been performing consistently well right from the IPL. Rohit Sharma after his IPL exploits has disappointed a little, but given his temperament and technique, he’ll be back among the thick of things. Only Yuvraj has let us down with this shaky footwork but again he is turning into a batting all rounder with this left arm slow bowling.

The bowlers, especially Zaheer and Munaf have shown lot of promise. The former in particular has used his experience to good effect and helped the side with early breakthroughs.

Lastly, the umpires for once did not think too much before ruling batsmen out LBW. This was much needed as cricket after IPL was turning out to be more favoring the batsmen. Bravo, Billy Doctrove!

Finally, a few words for the losing side - Jayawardene with his never-say-die attitude in the third one dayer almost took his side home after a disastrous start. Hats off to him! Sangakkara and Dilshan thankfully for the Indians did not exhibit their special liking for the Indian bowlers.

Way to go, India and Dhoni!!

IPL – A smartly packaged and spicily served drama!

It is a little difficult to accept the emergence of sudden change and the shattering of conventionally understood cricket. IPL has forced both cricket followers and non followers in huge numbers to acknowledge the changing trends in mass demands. We as a nation were desperately in need of quality evening entertainment. We were bored and fed up with ill-dressed television anchors, over confident and under prepared news anchors, reality shows of every hue and color and scheming, decked up mother in laws and their bedfellows.

Package and spice:

IPL, Lalit Modi and BCCI’s s version of ICL saw and exploited this opportunity with a win-win formula for all stakeholders – franchises, organizers and players. It played to the average Indian’s need for change and has emerged indubitably successful. Players who had never in their lives played a single test match got a chance to rub shoulders with the likes of stalwarts like Shane Warne, Muralitharan, McGrath, Kallis, Dravid and Ganguly.

A three hour match scheduled in the evenings after office hours with the assured presence of bollywood personalities and energetic cheerleaders is some spice! In a country where actors and cricket stars enjoy cult status, the combination with the added prospect of witnessing the foreign players sharing the dressing room and their strategies with local city boys was bound to be a success story.

Speculative impact:

This kind of club invasion of cricket will no doubt increase the reach of the sport and cultivate new audiences as we witnessed this season. But experts and columnists, players and the odd cricket fan are still unable to predict what impact this will have on the future of cricket as a sport. Is the auction of players vulgar or should it be accepted as the arrival of professionalism in cricket? Are cheerleaders and their antics obscene or are they just the addition of a welcome menu item to the 3 hour course?

Will club culture take too long a time to evolve or have the crowds started cheering for the cities already? Will senior cricketers whose fitness was always under the hammer be able to adapt to this shortened version quickly? Some of these questions came up even after the success of the T20 world cup but never so strongly.

Smart captains and team work:

T20 matches hardly give the players time to breathe and try out new strategies. It is all about shrewd and smart captaincy and team work. Teams like Chennai and Rajasthan wouldn’t have come to the finals but for the presence of able leaders of men in Shane Warne and Dhoni. Agility, good reflexes, strong arms, innovative captaincy, quick counter attacks fetched Rajasthan the trophy. Jadeja, Asnodkar, Pathan, Warne and the rest of the team though not winners on individual merit succeeded because they adapted to any demanding situation better than other teams.

An action packed thriller:

Seeing the inconsequential Mumbai V Bangalore match at the end of the league stage live in the stadium at Bangalore, one could easily feel that the tournament had managed to strike a chord with the populace. Braving the rains, a sizeable crowd had turned out even fully aware that the result would hardly change the course of the tournament.

Colorful cheerleaders, Hindi and Kannada songs blaring form the sound systems in between overs, players who were always looking for runs meant a charged up atmosphere that kept the expectation levels high. The crowd cheered for Jayasuriya, Sachin, Dravid and Kumble alike. Loyalties were forgotten and compromised in the heat of the moment. It was all part of a new spectacle that the game seems to have embraced quickly taking with it the average Indian citizen.

IPL is here to stay; big money is here to stay and cheerleaders are here to stay for contrary to aesthetics, sensibilities and supposed threats to the future of the true gentleman’s game, it is the crowds that will dictate what they want and rightly so!

We can after all enjoy both carnatic music rendered by respectable veterans of nuances as well as pop music rendered by overconfident bold youngsters, can’t we, as Mukul Kesavan seems to ask?

From Adversity to History - A Rewarding Journey

The Indian team has just won the Perth test match and media commentators have already elevated the win to proclaim it as “the best test triumph ever”. Is it really so?

Hardly days to go before the match, Indians suffered an incredible defeat at the hands of the world champions at Sydney causing the nations’ public to vent all its anger at the opposition team’s rude manner, a “nothing-short-than-victory-would-do” attitude and of course the shocking umpiring bloomers.

Any captain in Kumble’s place would have found it hard to stomach the heat but the simple, soft-spoken, humble and mentally strong Bangalorean almost judiciously handled the media and made sure that the focus of the team doesn’t waver. Within days history was created at Perth – the WACA where visiting teams are written off even before the first day’s play commences.

At Sydney, it was a classical case of the Australian players and the umpires shooting themselves on the foot. How else can one explain a player who stands his ground after edging a catch to first slip, a supposedly gentleman-cricketer (Gilchrist) appealing for Dravid’s wicket when the ball was nowhere near the bat, a team’s captain grounding a catch and claiming the same shamelessly, an umpire consulting the opposition captain to declare a batsman out, another umpire having seemingly strange hearing discrepancies and to top it all, a third umpire failing to judge a batsman out after conclusive television replays to that effect?

The Australian team will have to do a lot to regain their place in many a cricket fan’s heart. No umpire will ever be free of pressure officiating again in a test match in Australia what with two of their colleagues covering themselves in glory. Umpiring errors in Australia aren’t new with several players and coaches often expressing their unhappiness before notable being the late Bob Woolmer, John Wright and our own Sourav during the last tour.

Indians did not cloud themselves in true glory either as Harbhajan succumbed to the Aussie bait almost effortlessly. That episode got even Shashi Tharoor to give his view: “It is dangerous to act as if the undoubted financial weight of India in world cricket entitles us to our own set of rules”. I hasten to add that we are increasingly perceived as acting exactly in that manner by at least some keen followers of the game too.

When one thought, it is packing time for the touring team, better sense prevailed and to the delight of a billion plus fans, the team showed that it has the goods to beat the world champions in their own best-suited-backyard.

Not getting intimidated by the conditions, persisting with a youthful pace attack and an experienced middle order and more importantly playing for a win from the word ‘Go’, this is certainly one test win that’ll do the game proud from an Indian perspective and help Kumble join the select club of that fast dwindling breed in cricket – Gentlemen!!

Part of the cheering crowd!!

The area around M G road and Cubbon road wore a festive look. One could see the Indian tricolor everywhere. She was on sale for anything between 30 and 200 rupees depending on how much one was willing to bargain on and what size one had in mind. The atmosphere was one of eager expectancy and excited talk. People got their faces painted in saffron, white and green, draped themselves in the three colors and were all head towards the Chinnaswamy stadium. All of Bangalore – from the vegetable vendor next door to the omnipresent IT professional – waited for India to continue from where she had left the previous day.

Starting at 365/5, the day saw another run feast with several records getting rewritten. The crowd at the stadium was witness to:

Ganguly alias the Bengal tiger, reaching his maiden test double century,

Irfan Pathan on a comeback scoring his first test century,

Bangalore registering its highest ever innings total and many more such records.

In India, cricket to borrow a cliché is a religion and if anyone needed proof, the applause and roar of the crowd should be proof enough. Add to that, Sourav Ganguly was playing a flawless game that was a pure pleasure to watch. I don’t know what it is about left handers that make their game beautiful particularly when they are in good form.

How can one forget to mention the redoubtable master in this context – Brian Lara – when he is at his best? Sadly though, West Indies cricket is at its lowest ebb and one can only hope that things start to fall in place soon. Enough digression!!

When we were anxious at the fall of Karthik, who perished yet again to a foolish shot, in walked Irfan Pathan, and made the day a truly unforgettable one for himself in his career. He treated the bowlers with true disdain in his innings which was dotted with four hits that cleared the ropes by quite a good distance. The crowd couldn’t have asked for more…


Some were desperately trying to get themselves into the television screens. The Bengal tiger suddenly became Bangalore tiger and every chart had something to say about how good the NEO sports team was!!

The sweltering heat (The weather pundits got it completely wrong once again for a partly cloudy forecast turned out to a brightly sunny morning) didn’t dampen a trifle the enthusiasm and energy of the Indian fan. But the Pakistani fielding though it was mostly patchy wasn’t left unappreciated either when the occasional dive was on show.

When the Pakistanis came out to bat in the final session, all eyes were on the Indian fielders. When Pathan and Harbhajan came to field at the third man position near our stand, the crowd kept calling them hoping that they would at least for a moment turn their heads and acknowledge the mass. It was akin to getting a rare darshan at close quarters in a temple.

When Kumble struck trapping Hameed leg before, the jubilation reached a high point. After all, the Jumbo was a local boy recently elevated to lead the Indian eleven. Debutante Ishant too got the crowd’s attention and respect he’d have hardly expected. But in a game that is adored by millions that should hardly be a matter of surprise.

The Chacha from across the border was briefly the cynosure of all eyes. A little boy was relentlessly crying out ‘Dravid!! Dravid!!’ and ‘Salman Butt, out!!’. His cries rose above the din and every once in a while a face would try to search among the multitude for the source of that enthusiastic cry.

As the Pak batsmen got into the groove, the crowd started to leave in little groups perhaps because some of them had got more than their money’s worth for the day. As we got up and started walking towards the exit, we could still hear the roar of the people and our heart was heavy with a tad of disappointment that the day had drawn to a close, but nevertheless our tired faces glowed with satisfaction too, having been witness at last to what every avid cricket lover would yearn for in is life – Watching A good day’s play.