BPL pads up to play cricket again

Sanyo-BPL Limited, the recently launched firm for CTVs, is back to advertising during cricket matches.

The firm is expected to advertise heavily during the ensuing one-day series between India and Pakistan. BPL, during the final test match, had made its presence felt.

The advertisement will be on certain spots like pitch reports and certain strokes by the batsmen such as straight drives and the like. The company, which is adopting a dual brand strategy, will push the BPL brand in the cricket series.

The Sanyo brand campaign on the other hand, targetted at the high-end, is expected to launch an outdoor campaign initially in the Delhi market and then roll out pan-India in due course.

The move by BPL to advertise during cricket matches will mark the return of the brand to this genre of advertising. During its heydays, when BPL had enjoyed an 18 per cent marketshare prior to the 2002 tailspin, BPL was strongly associated with live telecasts of cricket having associated itself with the replays.

"It was a branding strategy which got high visibility and recall among the consumer and the association with consumers grew," an advertising professional noted.

The initial advertising campaign for the Sanyo-BPL is expected to have a spend of close to Rs 15 crore. The company is also expected to announce Sachin Tendulkar as its brand ambassador after the Indian cricket team returns from its Pakistan tour.

The company is learnt to have zeroed in on Sachin Tendulkar to indicate the revival of the firm, similar to Sachin's revival of form in the recent past during which he scored the world record 35th test century.

In a related development, as part of the corporate debt restructuring programme which BPL Limited had managed to sew up over the past year, it is making a preferential issue of 2 crore shares of Rs 10 each at a premium to Electro Investment, a company promoted by the Nambiar family.

The firm held 8.24 per cent of BPL Limited as on December 31, 2005. BPL also announced that its two senior personnel Viswanath Nambiar and P V K Sundaram have resigned as directors of the company.