LG ready to roll the pitch, bid for sponsorship rights of ODI series

Consumer electronics giant LG said that it will aggressively bid for title sponsorship rights for the two one-day international (ODI) tournaments involving India.

"We are looking at the Hong Kong Cup scheduled in June, involving India, Pakistan and Australia, and the upcoming Asia Cup in July. The company has earmarked a budget of nearly Rs 42 crore for cricket related marketing activities this year," said Anil Arora, head (marketing), LG.

The figure is likely to go upto Rs 50 crore if some of the deals it's negotiating work out. Apart from these two tournaments, LG is already one of the official sponsors of the ICC champions trophy to be held in England in the month of September, for which it had coughed up $5 million.

LG had earlier announced an advertising budget of Rs 7 crore for the Pakistan series but had failed to bag the title sponsorship rights which went to its rival Samsung.

"According to our estimates, the entire cost of sponsorship for the Indo-Pak series, and the assorted marketing initiatives that would have had to go along with it, would cost around Rs 40-50 crore, which happens to be our annual budget. We felt it was an unviable proposition," explained Arora. He added that the company was planning a slew of surprise initiatives for the "historic" series.

The company is bracing up for a cricket-packed calender which includes tours of South africa and Australia to India. LG will invest around Rs 8 crore in advertising and marketing during the series against Australia to be played in November-December this year.

LG also launched of a new range of seven fully automatic washing machines with capacities ranging from 5-7 kgs. "Washing machines will grow at a steady 7-8 per cent this year and at LG we have set a target of 6.5 lakh units and Rs 458 crore for this division," said Rajeev Jain, head (washing machines) LG.

"The products have been designed keeping in mind the different regional requirements. For the southern region, where water hardness in common, we have a feature which can sense the quality of water and signal the need for higher detergent density during the wash," said Khalid Zamir, head (product manufacturing), LG.

Just ahead of the summer months LG has also lined up seven frost-free refrigerators and five models of airconditioners to be launched soon.