IPL 6 Alive
By Harish Bijoor
With the IPL season 6 poised to
rear its noisy head once again in weeks if not days, it’s time to take stock of
cricket. Time to sit up and smell the cricket. And there is plenty going to be
around to smell, sniff and get high for sure.
IPL is now a snotty young brat of
nearly 6. In terms of sporting formats, and most certainly in terms of formats
the game of cricket has gone through, these are clearly still early days. EPL Soccer
has been in its current avatar for 17 gangly years, and America’s favorite Super
Bowl format is a late teenager as well in its current format, with its lineage
of the AFL and NFL sport that started in 1960.
This snotty brat of nearly 6 has
gone through many a tumult over these years. What started as an experiment literally
is today a format that gets in the mega bucks, as it gets in the mega eye-balls
into the category. The movement of
IPL is however still young. Team franchise owners have done a lot, but lots is
left to be done as well. Time to sit up and take stock then. There are teams and teams. Nine of them
in this IPL version 6.0. Shut your eye then and think of an IPL team. Which one
comes to your mind first?
Without getting prescriptive or
generic, the one team that comes to your mind first, is possibly the best
marketed team across the last six years of this passion movement called IPL. To
some it is the Kolkata Knight Riders. Never mind that they have never ever won
a season except the last, Shahrukh Khan does it for you! And never mind that he
is not a cricketer. This is not cricket anyway. Its’ cricketainment’. A cusp
movement where Bollywood meets cricket and where Bollywood and cricket together
meet Indian business.
To yet others it is a Mumbai
Indians in Blue. Sachin is the darling cricketer of the nation, and he does it
for you. And to more, it is a Chennai Super Kings. Dhoni is Captain India, and
Captain India is captain of CSK. Two wins in five years makes it all the more irresistible
a team, Dhoni and all.
But guess what, these are still
early days. The cookie is still crumbling and the dice is still rolling. As
Season 6 kicks off, the one who markets his team the best is the one that wins
the stakes at the end of it all. Remember, this is a business. In this
business, it is really not about how much you bled in terms of bottom-lines
over the last five years, it is all about how you will go laughing all the way
to the bank at the end of it all as a Franchisee. This is a business that
revers eye-balls above all else. The one team that gets the biggest set of
eye-balls is the one that has won at the end of it all. What’s worse and
bitingly real is the fact that the team that wins the season is not necessarily
the one that gets the biggest eye-balls at all. Ouch.
Creating a team that is totally
rich in its passion content as far as cricket lovers and consumers are
concerned, and nurturing a brand that is rich in eye-balls is a challenge in
itself. This challenge needs two very clear points of recognition. And these
two points of recognition need to be imbibed totally into the DNA of teams that
are serious in creating brand properties that will attract the right valuation
number when you are ready to sell and exit. If at all.
Point 1 is a simple one.
The Marketing reality of IPL is
dictated by consumers. The biggest reality is the fact that IPL teams are not
owned by Franchisees, but are owned by viewers and passionate fans of the game
who get off the pedestal and become more than just mere viewers of a game. The
Kings XI Punjab is really not owned by Ness Wadia and Co. The team is really
owned by a whole bunch of passionate Punjabis clutching onto their Lassis and their
Whiskys alike and enjoying the game and living vicariously through their team
players on and off the field. Mostly off.
Recognize team ownership clearly
and gear your every marketing activity with this in mind.
And Point 2 is even simpler.
IPL is a seasonal game. This is a
game that wakes up in summer and slumbers even before summer has slept. This is
a game that lasts all of weeks. The event aspires to harvest the
passion of 800-million plus cricket lovers in India and possibly a Diaspora
audience of every nation-affiliation of another 200-million. The event is a
2-billion eye-balls event. Remember, most of us have two of this each.
IPL is a format that is alive for
8 weeks and dead for most of the remaining 44 weeks in a year. This seasonality factor must not
be taken as a game holiday period by teams. Teams that do this lose out. Team
management and the very process of managing the IPL brand is a forever process
and needs to be recognized as one. Brands that take breaks, break for sure.
Recognize the continuity of your
brand and keep your marketing activity alive right through the year. Your plan needs to be one that
understands clearly that there is a game on the field, and then there is a game
on television, and then most importantly, there is a game on in the lives of
people, who are forever alive, sadly unlike your attention to the brand.
I think these are two important
pillars the individual teams need to build their brands on. These are basic brand foundation
points.
If I look around the 9 teams in
the game that have attempted to do this right, I pick far and few names. The
one top-of-mind name that comes close though is the Chennai Super Kings teams.
This is one team that seems to have imbibed the ethos and has attempted to keep
the spirit of the team alive. Not perfect, but getting there in a meandering
manner for sure.
What do I find right with CSK? Let
me list them out as I see it. Two things and more for sure. Ideas all other
teams can run with. Ideas that will help populate the game that is IPL in a
more meaningful and intrusive manner than now.
1.
Team
ownership is clear. The brand idea is simple. Fans own the team. Fans don’t
run the team as yet, but there is a semblance of offering fans this chance.
Look at the way they have asked fans to upload videos on the team. There is a
semblance of interactive marketing at play. Every visual mnemonic they have
chosen and a whole host of pre-event publicity campaigns on television have
chosen to incorporate the language, the lingo and the rustic aura that is
typically Chennai for a start and Tamilian till the end. The ability of the
team to weave into its DNA its very sets of viewers and fans is a step totally
in the right direction. One that will pay rich dividends.
The team needs to do a lot more though. Team ownership needs to be precipitated and pushed deeper for a start. CSK needs to look at forming school level clubs across Tamilnadu for a start. Cricket clubs that meet regularly not only to play the game, but to discuss, disseminate and do lots lots more with cricket than has been attempted thus far. The team needs to also drop its Chennai focus and delve deeper for a start into Tamilnadu as a whole, and possibly in later years even deeper into the Tamil Diaspora that populates India and the world at large. The game to an extent has just begun for CSK. But well begun for sure guys!
The team needs to do a lot more though. Team ownership needs to be precipitated and pushed deeper for a start. CSK needs to look at forming school level clubs across Tamilnadu for a start. Cricket clubs that meet regularly not only to play the game, but to discuss, disseminate and do lots lots more with cricket than has been attempted thus far. The team needs to also drop its Chennai focus and delve deeper for a start into Tamilnadu as a whole, and possibly in later years even deeper into the Tamil Diaspora that populates India and the world at large. The game to an extent has just begun for CSK. But well begun for sure guys!
2. Seasonality of the format is being tackled.
The initial attempt of taking the CSK team off the 20:20 field, and off the
television has been handled well. The ‘Junior Super Kings’ school tournament in
Chennai is an example of good intent. This needs to be driven into the
hinterland of Tamilnadu and the Tamil Diaspora for sure. Let’s remember, the
more passion you build into the format, the more it delivers. Events such as
the ‘JSK’ allow brands to get off the pedestal of the ‘not-so-intelligent’ box
and walk into people’s lives intrusively.
Teams that want to be in the reckoning of consumer lives right through
the year, and not for just ten weeks flat, need to do this. More of this. Quizzes, essay contests,
fashion-shows and what not for sure.
As IPL teams mature, we will see
lots more of what CSK is doing being done by every other team. As teams vie to
vest their teams with 100 Million Dollar valuations for a start, team
managements need to remember that valuation does not necessarily accrue by a
team’s performance in the season at all. A lot can happen outside an Eden
Gardens a Mohali or a Dharmshala.
In fact a lot does happen outside. The real action for IPL teams is outside.
Outside and inside the homes of millions of fans who actually own your team.
These fans can take you places, and these very fans can take you to the
cleaners as well, if you the Franchisee does not do it right.
IPL has a format that has two
quotients. One is what one waits to watch for eight weeks. This is packed with
the passion for the team, the passion for the player, the passion for the mega
spectacle of cricket(made even more mega by the broadcaster) and the yen to see live the Big A (and
Mrs. Nita Ambani of course), a Preity Zinta, Sharukh Khan, Vijay Mallya and
more.
The second quotient is one that
happens after the season is done with and wrapped up. This begins just the week
after. This begins, thrives and lives in the lives of the fans of the teams in
question. This will translate into a lot more as we go through the years ahead.
While most teams have got quotient 1 right, quotient 2 is something teams need
to think about and invest in.
Even as I
close this piece, I hear that the CSK team is ready to launch its comic book
avatar dubbed the “Lion of Chepauk”. What do we wait for next then? “The Loins
of Punjab” in a comic book avatar from Mohali? Touche!
The author is a brand-strategy specialist & CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Twitter @harishbijoor
