Is Brand IPL affected by negativity?

IPL: Love, Sex and ‘Dhoka’

By Harish Bijoor

I define a brand simply. My definition: the brand is a thought. A thought that lives in people’s minds. To that extent, IPL is a thought. A thought that lives in millions of people’s minds. A thought that is positive, a thought that is negative, and a thought that is even mixed-up in what it conveys.

IPL Season 5 has allegedly had it all. Love, sex and ‘dhoka’! Lots of love with the WAGS all around, lots of sex which none of us want to know about, and if one is to believe the match-fixing allegations, ‘dhoka’ was there as well!

Let’s give it to IPL then. What Lalit Modi created from scratch, is today a 5-year-old toddler that is more than toddling. IPL is today a big brand property. A property that packs significant value in the sphere of ‘cricketainment’. This is just not pure cricket for sure. The purist fan of a 5-day version will baulk when he or she sees the kind of innovation that this game is all about. This is really a cusp of cricket and entertainment. The ultimate heady cocktail of the two. While cricket is the national religion of India, Bollywood is the national way of vicarious living. In the smallest of towns and villages of India, men and women live through the lives of their Bollywood stars. No wonder then that Rakhee Sawant is an icon in Tier 2 India among middle class women, who would otherwise never ever dress the way a Rakhee Sawant does, or better still dance the way she does, or worse still talk the way she does!

IPL married the realm of cricket with Bollywood. IPL brought a Vijay Mallya and a Mukesh Ambani to cricket stadiums across the country. IPL had politicians rubbing shoulders with film stars and film stars rubbed shoulders and more with cricketers and cricketers with bookies and bookies with I don’t know who else. IPL to that extent is the heady cocktail of every mover and shaker that makes for business, cricket, politics, cinema and more. IPL is therefore an amalgam of people we have never ever seen together, all living a happy and unhappy life forever.

Never mind whether your latest film was a flop, you were there. Never mind if your business was tanking, you were there. Never mind if your government was going down the chute, you were there. IPL somehow had everyone who wanted eyeballs converging on this one little space called IPL. The brand therefore happened. And how!

The downsides of IPL have been many. We have had spats on and off the field. Names such as Luke Pomersbach came to the fore in hotel room spats, allegations of match-fixing had cricketers being grilled, after-match parties had their own bits of fracas going and one rave party got busted.

Is this all needed and necessary? Is this all part of the IPL-brand toolkit? 

I do believe it is. Let’s remember IPL is not cricket. It is ‘cricketainment’ at large. Every incident makes the game that much more memorable. That much more heady. Take a heady mix of last-ball finishes, add to it cheer-leaders who bring glamour and glitz, shake it all up with a Preity Zinta, a Vijay Mallya, a Shah Rukh Khan or a Priyanka Chopra(till recently)! Stir it with bits and pieces of controversy. And what do you have? IPL!

The point I make is a simple one. IPL is a frivolous brand. Not a serious one. Controversies and negative brand strokes are bad for serious brands. Controversies are bad for Satyam and Reebok and Adidas. Controversies and bickering and rave parties are all a part of the DNA of the frivolous brand. Frivolous brands need and seek out controversies. All this makes for IPL.

What next then in Season 6 of IPL? Obviously more of it.

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Harish Bijoor is a brand-strategy specialist  & CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Twitter.com @harishbijoor

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Re-position Brand Bengal

How to re-position and build Brand Bengal?

Touch Branding Brand Bengal

By Harish Bijoor

The rise of Mamata in West Bengal is possibly the best thing that has happened to Bengal. I do not say this with jingoistic political fervour.  Instead I say it with realistic pragmatism. This pragmatism is related to one simple word: change.

Brand Bengal has been static for far too long. Brand Bengal has seen just no change for far too long. Time for change. And what better an opportunity than now? There is a change in political leadership (after eleven long years), political party (after 34 longer years) and political ideology (after the longest number of years).

Brand Bengal is crying to be re-positioned. This re-positioning needs to be all about change. Change that is radical, and change that delivers and touches the lives of people in a meaningful manner.

Let me look at colors first. From red to green. From the Marxist traffic-stop red to a Trinamool fresh and alive green. I do believe the colors themselves tell a story. A story that needs to be taken to heart and taken ahead in terms of actual ground level delivery by Mamata and team.

The election euphoria will die down, grass-root level realities will bite, the economy will bite, the dissenting sets of folk in the opposition will bite, and the expecting patient masses will bite as well.

In a political democracy such as ours, the masses will give its leaders time. But this time will run out slowly but surely. As will the patience of the masses. What Mamata has to therefore do is pitch deep in with a 100-day program that delivers. Delivers stuff that can be seen, touched, felt, smelt and experienced.

My advise then, is a 4-point active touch programme for the first 365-days.

1.     Touch Kolkata. Touch Kolkata with a clean Kolkata campaign where you will involve party cadres and the community alike. The party cadres are fresh with the positive energy of the recently concluded elections. Harvest this energy right in touching and thanking every Kolkatan by cleaning up his area physically. With his help. And with the active support of the ground level cadres. Tell the Kolkatan that the end of the election is just about the beginning of governance. A clean message to convey as well.

2.     Touch the top 80 small towns of West Bengal. Touch it with a campaign that has the party cadre going all out to involve the young in the work force who are looking for work. Build a plan to link the best BPO outfits of India to go into the interiors to source manpower that is education-ready but has no actual job-opportunity to fit into. Make a model of it.

3.     Touch the top 600 villages of West Bengal as well. Again with the active party cadre. Touch the top 600 villages with a plan to educate the children who just don’t go to school. Focus on the girl child, where the problem is worse. Touch these villages with the torch of education. Marry this with a pilot mid-day meal scheme that focuses on nutrition. Make a model of it.

4.     Touch the next level of 1800 impoverished villages from the worst districts. Out here, use the cadre to actually help out with a programme that focuses on health delivery to all. Put together a robust preventive health-care programme, even as the focus remains on curative care. Bengal must boast of a zero-tolerance to sickness. Use PPP from the best Pharmaceutical companies that are waiting on the wall of such a  participation. Make a model of it.

The focus of every initiative is touching people. The touch of Mamata?

Most governments when just elected get besotted with governance that is related to what happens at the top. Mamata must be different. She must touch everyone when the iron of the elections is just very, very hot. She must be able to convey to the people that she means business. If Mamata does not run fast in the first 100 days she will find it harder to run faster thereafter.

Re-positioning Brand Bengal will happen not in one day, not in a hundred days, but possibly in all of a thousand days of positive touch and feel oriented governance.

My definition of a brand is a simple one: The brand is a thought. Brand Bengal is a thought. This thought needs to be leveraged with positive inputs that actually touch people every day and tell them loudly that there is a government that is working all the while. Working with the goal of delivery in a better life to the common man at large. A life they can see, touch, feel, smell, taste and experience.

True-blue branding is really not about image. It is really about experience. I do believe Mamata can and has the ability to deliver this experience. An experience that will rise above the rhetoric at large of positive governance.

People at large are simple people. People want action and not words. There have been enough words right up to the election. Now that the elction is done with, and now that the government is in place, people really want the experience.

Re-positioning brand Bengal will happen in the experience of governance the people of Bengal will feel for a start. Brand Bengal has two aspects to it. The first aspect is what Brand Bengal means to those who live in Bengal. The second is all about what Bengal will represent to everyone else who does not live in Bengal. The first task to attempt is Internal branding. External Branding will follow seamlessly thereafter.

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Harish Bijoor is a brand-strategy specialist & CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Twitter.com @harishbijoor

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