Marketers tap into sports to bat for brands

This Sunday 5,000 women will run for their pet causes in Mumbai. Feminine hygiene brand Stayfree, which has co-created the “women's only” marathon with media firm DNA, is leveraging the event as a brand-building platform.

Neeraj Goyal, marketing manager, Stayfree, says the brand is all about comfortable protection, bringing out the can-do attitude, and removing the pinpricks of life. He says the “I Can” half marathon, where women will run for causes like safety of women in public spaces, awareness about cervical cancer and education of the girl child, is about the same.

There are others too co-creating sports properties that will take their brand message further among their core target group. Biscuit brand Parle G, for which rural India is a huge market, had co-created the Grameen Khel in Maharashtra along with the Lokmat group. Similarly, Hero Moto Corp had done an activation programme involving hockey with college students, which synergised with its Phir Dil Do Hockey Ko campaign. And Coca-Cola had kicked off an inter-school football programme among school kids.

Mr Jitendra Joshi, Co-founder and CEO, SportzConsult, which has designed and executed these events, says that marketers are now going beyond mere sponsorship of existing sports events to actually creating sporting properties.

From a one sport (cricket) country, India is now getting to be a multi-sport nation and marketers are latching on to sporting opportunities that will benefit their brand.

Take Parle G. “Typically rural is a media dark area,” says Mr Mayank Shah, group product manager, Parle G, explaining the idea behind the Grameen Khel. “It is difficult for marketers to create communication and engagement for rural,” he says. Unlike the Under-17 Cricket which Parle G sponsored for seven years as a CSR intiative, Shah says the Grameen Khel activation was a pure brand building initiative. The overall biscuit market size in India is Rs 15,000 crore, of which 50 per cent of volumes and 45 per cent of value comes from rural.

Mr Goyal of Stayfree too points how in the largely two player Rs 1,500-crore feminine hygiene category, the run is an opportunity for Stayfree, which positions itself as a brand that cares for women's welfare, to engage with its core audience. “We will be running the event in Bangalore and Jaipur as well,” he says.

“It's a triangle – the sport, the brand and the communication,” says Mr Joshi of SportzConsult. He says his company has executed similar sport-led marketing activities for brands like Coca-Cola, Hero Moto Corp, Airtel, Nike, Deloitte, Accenture and Reliance.

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