 Hello and welcome to a brand new edition of our show from Logo to Impact, I'm Vikram Mosa. Here's where we break down marketing strategies, get you inside to how brands are built and unfettered views of new advertising campaigns. Here's what we've lined up on this show this week. Cricket Friends, he is back with IPL Season 9 and with it, all the innovative marketing opportunities. So how are brands building up the hype to reach out to the masses and scoop into the popularity of the game? That's our top story. Wooderphone's out with its Supernet 4G, it marks the return of the famous funk. Wooderphone brand chief Siddharth Banerjee walks out through their latest campaign. The Bachans endorsing Kalyan jewelers is not news, but the latest campaign for their newly launched diamond collection of Poova deserves a closer look, we'll get you our review. And as usual, we won't let you go without the humorous ad of the week. But now let's take guard by talking about the tournament that has garnered about a thousand crore rupees last season from advertising alone. IPL is back this summer and this time they're expecting it to rake in over 1200 crore rupees through advertising. So while many of us take sides with our favourite teams, clamour for those tickets or stay glued before TV sets, brands as ever are aiming to make the most of our love for the game. How are they gearing up for IPL fever? We've taken a few companies to see what they're doing differently by way of fair marketing strategies. That's a top story. The Indian Premier League. Clearly this is the biggest property on Indian television today. Amani Spinner with brands lining up for a bigger share of the visibility pie. When the IPL is broadcast, 60% of airtime is reserved for sponsors and 40% is for spot buys. But with every passing season, IPL has evolved from a cricketing event to a brand in itself. Little wonder then that other brands like Volani keep coming back to it for more. See, IPL is clearly one of the four most sporting events in the country. Over the years, IPL as a franchise has really developed very well. Starting from 2007, it has clearly come to be, I would say, one of the biggest sporting events, not just in India but in the world as well. And it offers a platform which really gets mass wide reach as well as an engagement with the consumers which I believe any brand can take advantage of. So we definitely believe it is the right platform for us and our brands to really be engaging with the consumer. The move to make cricket more than just a sport is evident in the many changes in communication for the league over the seasons. From Manoranjan Ka Baap in 2008 to Ek Desh Ek Janoon in 2009 to India Ka Tyohar in 2015 and now Ek India Happy Valar. IPL's current campaign, which incidentally has no trace of cricket in the TV commercial, is an attempt to engage viewers in cheerful conversations about the game. The campaign Tagland, as you know, is Ek India Happy Valar. What we are trying to say is that IPL has now reached an iconic level and it's become a huge brand. And it's important that that brand communicates with the people of India, with the viewers on television. And we are using this opportunity to spread a message of happiness, peace and harmony in the country. Sure enough, match-fixing controversies have rocked the Indian Premier League in the past but that hasn't deterred advertisers from betting on the property despite those early withdrawals. Along with the usual array of brands, this season's IPL has seen a rise in interest from handset manufacturers and Sony, the broadcast of the tournament, has already sold 90% of its inventory. With huge success that you achieve, there will always be a few controversies here and there but we have always focused ourselves on the goods of IPL and that's what we are trying to do this year as well. We have seen more interest from handset manufacturers this time compared to last season and we have seen the rates grow roughly 15-20% from last year to this year. There is a very, very strong interest in IPL and as I speak, we already have sold 90% of inventory on IPL. As the buzz around IPL starts to build all over again, sponsors like car maker Maruti Suzuki are revving it up not just for increased visibility but to boost sales. As the official ground sponsor, the association with the Cash Rich League is the first for the company and they are using the opportunity to advertise the latest car from its table, the Vitara Brezza Maruti's first compact sports utility vehicle. For us, the key audiences which are about 45% of the total viewer base of IPL is in the age group of 15-34 and those are the audiences that we are looking to catch their eyes and connect with the brand. And when I say the brand, the brand that we are talking about to connect with IPL is the most recently launched brand Vitara Brezza which is the compact urban SUV. It's positioned on glamorous and sportiness and what better sport than IPL to connect such a positioning. Owning a piece of this glamorous sporting event ensures the reach and scale the property provides. It helps advertisers position brands in the glamour and performance space making this an ideal association to reach a large portion of target audiences. The firm belief in the IPL as an advertising property is expected to see an increase in ad spends to 1,200 crores. The association with sport has been for many years now. In fact, we've been associated with cricket all through but primarily we have been the on-air sponsors. It's only this year that we've become the on-ground sponsor for the first time. Our spends on sports have gone up by nearly 20% over last year and to share with you this year whatever we spent in 16-17, sports will account for nearly 12% of the total spends. And now given the popularity of IPL on the digital platform, advertisers are sensing a new opportunity. Star India's video streaming service on Hotstar has brought in four sponsors and six large advertisers for the IPL this year. New cart acts, colony and Raymond are the main sponsors. And some of the large advertisers on the digital platform include the likes of Lloyd, Hindwe, Hero Fincock, Airtel and Amazon. Hotstar's own campaign targets the urban affluent which is its core audience. Their campaign screen chhota hai per dil bada hai is for an audience for whom the main screen is the mobile phone. This seems to be the new platform for brands hoping to reach the engaged sports audience. But is there sustainable value in this strategy? IPL has become almost a contact sport now. You know, you see people running all over the place, batsmen colliding with the fielders and you know all sorts of things happening. And with the amount of strain and the strenuous activity these guys do, we certainly believe that they also need to recover from their injuries very, very quickly and because the games come very thick and fast as well in this format. So we believe that with Walani's spray, this is the right association for us to further carry on the strategy that we have built for the brand. So in a country that lives and breathes film and cricket, will the biggest cricket extravaganza, the Vivo Indian Premier League 2016, garner the desired response from advertisers and will they in turn drop bigger benefits through their ad spends on the tournament? We'll be keeping score at the boundary line. Well that gives us a sense on how much IPL has grown by way of the brand in itself and the platform that it creates for many other brands to piggyback on. To get us more perspective on this, N. Chandramolli, the CEO of Trust Research Advisory, is joining us in the studio again. Great to have you with us, Chandrak. Now we're seeing this space grow over a period of time whether you look at the world of cricket, the possibilities that exist, the tournaments that have come up, not least of each IPL. Tell us about the brand IPL itself. How much more credibility has it been able to generate away from all the controversies to be able to get these brands more and more attracted towards it? So IPL as a brand truly has not generated much more credibility than it had. It had the highest in 2013. Then it really fell from a 350 odd ranks to 700 odd ranks, stayed steady there now. But I don't think it's about IPL as a sporting brand that matters now. It's that platform that it's ended up creating that's truly giving an opportunity for sports lovers to be able to come on to a particular platform and get entertained. It's quite different from the T20 World Cup wherein you're looking for an end result after a series of matches. Here you're just looking at that two hours or whatever amount of time they're spending and getting excited about that. It's like a near high for something that you might take as a pill. So the platform does exist. But now how are brands leveraging themselves on the kind of platform that is being offered to them through an IPL right now because we just heard Maruti Suzuki now. Vitara Brezza is a product that's out in the market. They're using it as an opportunity to be able to further talk about the story around this product. Do you see more of that happening where companies and brands are going to try and sell products through IPL or is there a move towards brand building right now through IPL? So earlier it was always brand building. You know the principle sponsors earlier were DHL. The last five years has been Pepsi. And coming on now we've got Vivo, a very, very new upstart mobile brand from China just two years into the making in India. Already at 466 in the Brand Trust report itself. So very, very high, quick, quick movements forward. So I think there will be brands which will sell products like the Vitara Brezza and there will be brands which are trying to make a base in India. For example, Oppo which did it in World Cup and therefore Vivo doing it over here. I think this is about utilizing that 190 million viewers in TV and another 100 million on the digital space. So 290 million, 300 million people. That's almost 30 crore people watching this entire thing. How about 100 matches over two months? It's an extremely exciting proposition for any brand and you don't spend way too much. It's like Vivo would have spent about 80 crores for two years. So it's going to happen side by side. There are reaches where it's at right now with the tournament of this nature and none of that shine has really gone away despite the kind of controversies that we've had in the past where brands actually pulled away from it. All of that has been restored. All of that has been forgotten and right now you see a lot more of that happen now because you're seeing Hotstar come in. They're offering live streaming and it's in a couple of languages as well. It's not just restricted to an English. There is Hindi as well and there are significant brands not least of which being Sun Farmer and they're pushing Volini through it as well. So do you see more of that happen? So just to talk about the last part which is Volini it's a very, very relevant brand to sports because when you get hurt you kind of use paint bombs. So paint bombs is also a very significant segment in the brand trust report. Meaning you'll see at least seven or eight brands coming into a thousand brand segment which is rare but just such a small sub-segment of paint bombs so to speak. But I think that there will be more associations that will be made that are relevant to sports. I don't think for example the Vitara is basically a SUV. It's a sports utility vehicle. And therefore you see much more relevant kind of movement happening. Pepsi was a very youthful brand so to speak. Today you have 41% of women actually viewing this. So you can imagine that almost half the segment is women who are watching cricket which you wouldn't be imaginable just 10 years ago. So things have changed considerably. So I think this is going to become a carry momentum as it goes by. You'll find a wider audience as it comes by. Two languages too limiting. I think they should in the digital space having 35 languages. Why not? And once you do that you're reaching out to everybody and I think this will reach out to everybody. Wherever the internet goes you'll probably find the viewer. That's right. So there are things that are happening on the periphery as well and all of it is adding up. But for say a Sony that really has carried forth the torch as it were since that's where you get to watch the matches in being able to talk about the brand and what it really stands for at this point in time I see them taking it beyond cricket. They're talking about a Hapiwala India right now as part of their brand campaign for IPL. Do you find that striking? So I think it's only natural. They want to build the Sony brand, the sporting brand. It used to be the cricket brand as a brand that means happiness. It's something similar to what a coke might offer. It's a drink, it's a dark colored drink which has sugar in it. But then they talk about happiness. They talk about something so subliminal that all of us can relate to. And they would have gone in the same cycle that anybody else would have. They said what does cricket do? At the end of it, oh, you get happiness. So that's what we're doing. And they've created that brand for themselves and they want to say sustainably with the emotion of people. I think that's where they're trying to connect when they say Hapiwala India. So clearly that's how brands are building their story. Chandra, it's great to have you with us in the studio with your perspective. Thank you. And we look forward to having you with us again in the future. Thank you. We take a quick break. After that we're connecting with that Vanerjee of Vodafone. Now he talks to us about the new 4G rollout plans and their marketing strategy towards it that's coming up in just a moment. Don't want to miss this. Just give it to us.