Vivo hopes by streaming IPL matches it can win smartphone contest

The title sponsorship of the hot property that the Indian Premier League (IPL) is giving you enough bragging rights this time of the year and leverage for the rest of it, one would believe. Into its fourth IPL season and shelling out a whopping Rs 440 crore annually for the association, the Chinese smartphone manufacturer feels it is on course with its branding goals and has enhanced its engagement with the larger audience.  

To answer if the juice is worth the squeeze for that kind of an investment leads to some questions. The key among them is the branding translating into sales. The company says that not every gain can be tangible and cautions that life beyond the carnival is just as important. Some experts, however, raise a doubt on whether IPL as a platform has given it a distinct brand identity.

Nipun Marya, director, brand strategy, Vivo India, says while there is an uptick (doesn’t share numbers) in the sales during the 40-odd days the IPL matches are played, its newer initiatives around the gala event have helped the brand immensely and can strengthen it further. He finds the results of the brand metrics analysis — done in the beginning and at the end of the IPL season and including factors such as awareness, considerations, performance, current positions and purchase intent — encouraging.

Even as he goes on to add that “sales is a function of many things and absolutely attributing everything to IPL might not be correct”, Marya says the response to the company’s latest offerings, V15 and V15 Pro, the launch of which have almost coincided with the IPL or the weeks running up to it, have been good, even dubbing V15 as the most “successful product of the V series”.

“Our retailers and distributors are geared to gain from the brand recall that we get during these 45-50 days and we also launch some of our premium products using this window,” he explains how it works for Vivo. Among the initiatives, he talks about the Vivo Perfect Fan contest (see box) as a major brand building exercise. “Anyone sitting in any part of the country can take part in our contest and it is not confined to only the urban centres where the stadiums are. Similarly fanparks take us deep into the country with newer centres like Madurai and Gangtok being added this year and enhance the brand presence aided by the promotional activities.”

The company is also tapping the newer social media forums. For instance, on TikTok, which has garnered a massive following across the urban-rural divide, the company recently ran a campaign which earned 30 million impressions.

It is also natural that the IPL window is a huge opportunity to advertise its products with premium slots reserved for it. For a company which plays across price points — ranging between Rs 8,000 and Rs 29,000 — isn’t Vivo undoing some potential gains by airing commercials only for the flagship products V15 and V15 Pro, featuring brand ambassador and actor Aamir Khan? While he acknowledges the importance of range advertising, Marya says it also depends on what is the company’s strategy at that point. “For us it is important that the consumers look forward to the new products because those are the new offerings to the market and also because the flagship products carry with them a lot of innovation into the market. Also when that product, equipped with the latest features, draws one to the store, people have the option of enquiring about and experiencing other products too. The halo effect gets transferred to the other products as well.”

Digital marketer Shubho Sengupta feels that as a consumer brand Vivo does have certain advantages over other companies that held the title sponsorship in the past. “There is a better connect with Vivo than with DLF. DLF just wanted to get noticed and there is a far better consumer connect in the inexpensive, first-time phone lot, especially in regional for Vivo; DLF was primarily urban,” he says.

For Marya, the convenience that OTT platform provides and the steady growth it has registered has left Vivo upbeat on both brand engagement and bullish on the prospects of the penetration for smartphones — the very devices on which the cricket matches stream and it looks to sell.


New touch points
 

• Earlier only partners were eligible for the Vivo Box which offers a luxurious cricket viewing experience in the stadium. This year anyone can contest and win a seat
• For better imagery, the latest model V15 has been placed in the trophy itself — a deviation from the packaged box given till last year
• The Vivo Concourse was like a dug out which was only used by spectators as a selfie-clicking point earlier, this year it is bigger and includes many interactive exercises
• With the BCCI taking the IPL fan parks to newer cities, Vivo believes it has a better opportunity to build a better connect with the allied activities it does for brand building there