Xpressions
End This Endorsement
by Gyan Saurabh Shahi,
Nirma Institute of
Management, Ahmedabad
Now that Indian cricket team has crashed out of the world cup without even making it to the super eight stage and the initial obsession turned anxiety and the subsequent shock and dismay has died down and life has begun to return to normal, it is perhaps the right time for us to take stock of the situation and make an attempt at estimating the real extent of the losses.
Given the status, that cricket enjoys in the Indian society and its unrivalled ability to captivate the Indian imagination, many companies or for that matter just about any company with a media based marketing strategy had chalked up a plan to promote its product during the world cup. In the past this had been a great strategy with a proven record. LG electronics spent huge amounts of money on cricket based promotions during the 1999 & 2003 world cups and this resulted in a highly perceptible increase in its products and sales. In the case of some Cola giants, half of their marketing plan is built around cricket. Pepsi Co. spends millions trying to get the cricketers to endorse their products, hoping that the larger than life image that some cricketers enjoy will rub off their products.
All of this has a downside too. In the event of poor performance by those who endorsed the product, the product itself is left without a promotion strategy as has turned out to be the case after this world cup. All said and done, when a single group of endorsers constitute the mainstay of your promotion strategy than you are infected playing a gamble with the product and that too a very expensive gamble.
Millions spent on signing on the cricketers have gone waste, millions spent on conceptualizing the advertising campaign and formulating promotional strategy have gone waste, for a while at least, the product is not backed by promotion in the market (it takes time to put in place an alternative marketing plan) and during this time it would almost certainly loose market share to the competition and in many cases, it can even backfire on the product due to its association with the endorsers that suddenly find themselves out of favor with the consumers.
Instead of relying solely on any one promotion strategy, I believe it would be only prudent to instead have a mix of promotion strategies that may appeal to the consumer in different ways and at different levels and in case if any one plan is rendered redundant by any event, other strategies can be relied upon to defend the market share of the product and to safeguard its reputation in the market.
Now that the grand dreams of winning the world cup
have been shattered and life has returned to normal (as normal as it can be in a
cricket living nation like ours) let us commit one saying to our memory and keep
it there “Never put all your eggs in one basket”- at least when the eggs are so
expensive.
Disclaimer : The views
expressed in the articles are author’s own views B’Cognizance or
IIITA is not liable for any objections arising out of the same.
The matter here is solely for academic use only.