The Hindu Business Line : The economic deconstruction of Brand Sachin

T wo decades ago, when Sachin Tendulkar walked in to bat at the Karachi Test match, no one could have predicted that he would become not just an enormous run machine, but also a man paid crores by firms for endorsing their products.

Sachin is a fantastic cricketer. So he was probably going to do well as a cricketer anyway. But how can his commercial success be explained? One clue can be found in economics which talks of necessary and sufficient conditions that must be fulfilled for an outcome to emerge.

Thus while it was necessary for Sachin to be a fantastic cricketer, was it also sufficient? The answer has to be No, because there have been other fantastic cricketers in the past who have not achieved such striking commercial success. Being a fantastic cricketer is necessary but it is not sufficient. Something else was needed.

That something else was modern television. True, live broadcasts of cricket in India began in the mid-1970s. But that was done by Doordarshan through terrestrial telecast via microwave stations, in black-and-white with one fixed camera on the roof of the pavilion and it had radio commentators doubling up as commentators on TV. Had Sachin played in that era, he would not have been such a huge advertising hit.

But even modern TV alone would not have been enough. After all, in the 1980s, many of the elements of modern television had arrived. There was the 1983 World Cup which India won, followed by the World Championship of Cricket which also India won (1985) and the World Cup of 1987 which was played in India and Pakistan. Despite this, nothing even remotely resembling Sachin emerged.

Something more was needed and that something came with the economic reforms of July 1991 - just 18 months (and less than a dozen matches) after Sachin's debut. The reforms set in motion the process that led to the explosive growth of consumerism from about 1995 onwards, just six years into his career.

As product competition grew, the need for product differentiation grew; as product differentiation grew, the need for advertising grew. As these grew, the need for a cheap way of reaching audiences grew, which is where TV came in.

For an advertiser, the cost of getting his message across to a viewer is less than 15 paisa per viewer during big matches and never exceeds 25 paisa. It goes up when the ad is played during non-cricket programming but not by much. But to make sure that people watch, a Sachin or a Shah Rukh or Amitabh is needed.

It was this combination – his cricketing prowess, modern TV and the economic reforms -- that propelled Sachin forward as one of the three top product endorsers in the country. The other two are both film stars – Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan.

There is also the question of viewer competence. How many people who watch an ad featuring Sachin also know enough about cricket to truly appreciate Sachin's performances? At the risk of sounding insulting, let me say this: very few. How many people, for example, would rank his innings in the sixth match against Australia at Hyderabad, where he scored that 175 in vain two weeks ago, as one of his best ever?

There is another question as well. Sachin does not always perform well. He went through a very lean patch prompting a former India player, Sanjay Manjrekar, to refer to him as “the elephant in the dressing room”. At that time, Sachin's batting average was 62.10 in 24 innings when the side batted first and 26 in 27 innings in which India batted second. In Manjrekar's view, this was hurting India because he was not helping India win.

Manjrekar had also written that only Sachin's stature ensured that he was not dropped and that he had become an elephant in the dressing room that no one wanted to talk about. And this is the point. An expert was saying that Sachin was a liability to the side but the public couldn't see it (but the firms seeking his endorsements did, which is why some dropped him).

Finally, we don't really know if people bought products Sachin endorsed or merely contented themselves with watching him with the brands.

Perhaps brands use celebrity endorsements as a habit. After all, where is the evidence that a Boost did better than Bournvita in terms of sales growth because it used Sachin?

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Sachin in new TV ad for Royal Bank of Scotland

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