Change the game

The world cup is here which gives our team a shot at glory and gives brands a shot at boosting their egos.

Well “traditional’ advertising does not seem to do much more than massage a brand’s ego.Let’s look at some numbers, during IPL season three,
There was 43 hours of advertising in the entire event.

There were 143 brands that were advertised during the season.

There were 44 brands advertised on-screen during the games.

How many can you remember ? Let me guess, the famous ZooZoo’s for one. Anything else ? Zilch?

Wait a minute, brands spent crores of rupees and out of the 43 brands, we just remember 1 (which also had the biggest marketing budget of the lot) ?

The other top advertisers were Samsung Electronics, Tata Teleservices, Hyundai Motors and Bharti Airtel but it seems tough to remember what they had to say so after spending crores of rupees you get zero recall.

A major issue with the  “Have cricketer, will advertise” technique is brand alignment. Most of our campaigns do not have a specific strategy or strategic fit with the brand. Another missing link is a clear ROI mechanism in place to measure so called “success” of a campaign.

Castrol is running the ‘ap match dekhiye. Duniya aapko dekhegi’ campaign, now how is that telling me anything about the brand or what the brand stands for ?

Pepsi is out with the “change the game” campaign and there seems to be a loose-fit with the brand’s offerings but then is a TVC enough to get this point across ?

Compare this to the  “Game Changer” campaign from Nike and check out the perfect brand allignment and innovative use of the web. This is what makes a strong brand (http://nikebetterworld.com/)

Brands world-over have been adopting innovative strategies to make an impact to tackle the above issues. Brand experience now is the key to ensure that a brand can communicate to the consumer what it stands for.

Pepsi did something innovative in 2009 when it decided to pass on the SuperBowl and instead invested the advertising budget into “Pepsi Refresh Project” (http://www.refresheverything.com/) which seemed in sync with “changing the game/challenging the rules” image of the brand but this approach seemed to get people involved with the brand. It went beyond a simple TVC. I wonder why it isn’t doing something similiar in India ?

Virgin attempted to execute a campaign which got people involved with the brand with the Indian Panga League. Their product offering was inter-state calls and the inter-state matches offered the perfect platform to promote this offering. The campaign used the tone of voice which was in sync with Virgin’s image and based on the numbers, the campaign was a success indeed but I don’t think the brand could support their promises or match the competitor offerings which may have generated in a limited ROI in terms of sales but it was a good attempt nonetheless.

You can also check out a case study on the campaign done by WATConsult , http://tinyurl.com/4ocmfo3

Nike had the recent “Write the future” campaign which used live action to update billboards live. They actually did write the future in real time and got people involved using social media to get them to feel and experience the core of the campaign.

There is a lot of potential out there for us to use to “change the game”.The only question is which brand is gonna wake up and smell the coffee first !

What do you think ?