Thursday, November 02, 2006

Forget the Boys in Blue, choose another colour


Yum! Restaurants, the owners of the KFC chain, negotiated for the sponsorship of the West Indies team for the Champions Trophy currently being played in India.
And going by what I know of sponsorship rates for teams other than India, I wouldn’t believe that KFC would have paid very much in comparison with what they might have paid for a logo on the Indian Team shirts.
KFC India is a significant beneficiary of a decision taken far away, and they have milked it to the opportunity to the hilt with their Bucket Mein Cricket promotion.

And in their story lies an opportunity.
Forget nationalism and jingoism for just a moment, and explore the possibility of, say, Lifebuoy sponsoring the South African side for the ICC World Cup 2007. Or Nivea for Men sponsoring the English squad through their India budgets. Or Pantaloons sponsoring Australia. And so on, and so forth.
That’s the beauty about sport such as football and cricket; photographs and videos cannot ignore one team or the other (as happens in sports such as F1 racing, where the laggards are largely ignored). So when Manchester United plays against Reading, the TV cameras will have to focus on both sets of players, and both sets of jerseys.

And both sets of logos.

If Wayne Rooney scores 5 goals against Reading, replays will show the logos on the Reading goalkeeper's shirt each time the goals are replayed.
For the ICC World Cup, any match that India plays in will be watched keenly by many million -- not one billion as Pepsi believes -- cricket fans in the country. And they will all be forced to watch the logos on the shirts of the opposing teams as well.
The matches will be telecast many, many times in the years to come, and while the commercials will disappear, the logos on the shirts will NOT.

So here’s a freebie from pigsandwings. A list of the teams that India will play against even if we do not make the knock out stage: Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Bermuda. Sponsoring Sri Lanka might not be too cheap, but Bangladesh and Bermuda? Go for it.
If you’re more adventurous, sponsor more than one team which does not command too high a price tag, even if the teams are not in India’s group. The Netherlands? Ireland? They too will play matches that WILL be telecast, their players, too, will be photographed. And their logos will be seen.
Just make sure that there’s no conflict with an existing ICC sponsor. To save you the effort in Googling for it, here’s the official ICC site.
May I remind you again that this strategy WILL NOT work with F1 racing?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bucket mein cricket promotion,indeed.
Tsk Tsk...they can't even think of a decent name.

Anant Rangaswami said...

Forget the name for the promo, what about the chicken?!!
A BUCKETFUL of it?

Anonymous said...

lolzzzzzzzzzz.
So did you have your bucketful of chicken today?

Anonymous said...

KFC have always sponsored the West Indies when touring Australia even with some very humerous advertisements.