IPL 2021 keeps spirits very high

Mumbai: The second phase of IPL 2021, which kickstarted on September 19, is going to be equally big or supersede Phase-1 in terms ratings and revenues, feel experts.

The reason is that a good number of brands had not participated in the sponsorship of IPL-I due to the then second wave of Covid. Now, when the festival season has begun, brands are very much willing to advertise the high-impact property, what IPL is.

Just Dial, Frooti and Vodafone brands have discontinued and Jio Fiber, AJIO have signed Co-presenting sponsor deal and Policy Bazar has signed as Associate sponsor. Talking to Bizz Buzz, R Venkatasubramanian, president and national head (investments), Havas Media Group India, says: "The 2nd phase of IPL 2021 is going to be equally big or supersede Phase-1 in terms ratings and revenues. Because, lot of brands have not advertised in 2nd wave of Covid period and all the brands would like to come back and advertise in High impact property i.e IPL to get the brand visibility in festival period."

It is despite the fact that ad rates of the IPL Ph-II have surged to more than Rs17 lakh for 10 seconds. The Star channel has signed 5 Co-presenting sponsorship and 11 Associate Sponsorship for Phase II, he informed. Viral Kohli says he will not play IPL next year onwards. What will be its impact?

"Virat Kohli will continue to play IPL for RCB and therefore we don't see any adverse impact," replied Venkatasubramanian.

Havas Media Group India commissioned a special research with YouGov to launch HI-CRICKET, its proprietary IP, to understand the impact of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021in influencing brand health metrics and identify the most meaningful and impactful brands and categories of IPL 2021.

The study reveals that defending champions Mumbai Indians emerged as the favourite team at the onset of the IPL, followed by RCB and CSK. E-Commerce brands were the biggest spenders before and during the IPL, with VIVO and Amazon Prime at the top of the recall hierarchy given their high media spends on the tournament.

This was followed by the durables & automobile sectors. Food delivery brands like Swiggy also enjoyed a high recall. The frequency of ordering remained high with close to 80 per cent of respondents having ordered food online at least once during the match time. Dream11 was

the highest recalled main sponsor, followed by Byju's and PhonePe. An increase in the number of fantasy gaming apps was observed during the IPL, however, the majority or three-fourths used it for playing fantasy cricket only. The overall impressions went up by 15 per cent in the 1st week of the IPL, which dropped back to similar levels during the last week of the IPL.

Almost all the top brands saw an increased association with personal and collective benefits. Automobile brands such as Hyundai, Renault and Kia witnessed an increased loyalty conversion. Durable brands such as Voltas, Signify (Philips) and Havells also managed to increase loyalty conversions.

The research was commissioned between April 2 and May 7, during the first leg of IPL 2021. The study encompasses 4500 online respondents across 10 cities in India, which gives a deeper understanding of how a larger-than-life platform like the IPL helps move mind measures.

YouGov's Cube philosophy (people, time and variables) coupled with Havas' Meaningful Brands framework resulted in this customized quantitative structured questionnaire for an agile, real-time solution, allowing advertisers to track the impact on brand health parameters such as recall, familiarity and perception.

Commenting on the findings of the second phase of HI-CRICKET study, Sanchita Roy, Head - Strategy, Havas Media Group India, said, "one of the pertinent questions that clients ask is the business outcome of high impact properties. At Havas, keeping in line with our Meaningful Brands philosophy, we wanted to understand the effect that IPL has on driving meaningfulness for brands across key high spending categories like Auto, E-commerce, Fantasy Sports, Online Food Delivery and so on. Across all the brands that we tracked as part of this study, interestingly we saw positive shifts across every stage of the consumer funnel when we compare the pre vs during tournament numbers.

What we have observed is that across brands, Personal and Collective perceptions have improved with the onset of the IPL. Personal parameters like value for money & convenience, and Collective perceptions of trust & respect saw the highest increase across brands."