Event
Indian Premier League (IPL)
Who Sponsors the Event
Vivo, a Chinese mobile handset manufacturer, has retained the Indian Premier League title
sponsorship rights for five seasons (2018-2022). Biggest Sponsor- Title sponsorship
Building Brand Equity
India is the world’s second-largest market for smartphones with more than 150
brands, but Vivo found a way to get consumers’ attention. Vivo associated itself with
the most significant sports event in India, helping it in building trust and loyalty
towards the brand. Collaborating with India's most significant sporting event - the
Indian Premier League - has played a crucial role in ensuring connect with Vivo’s
customers in India. From creating brand recall to reaching out to the pan-India
audience, the association has been significant in building brand and product
awareness.
Vivo’s target audience comprises of the young and dynamic millennials (age group of
18-35) always on the lookout for the best of innovation and technology, which is also
the target group that is most skewed towards cricket and are the biggest consumers of
the sport in India.
Vivo sells most of its phones in rural areas and IPL gets most of its viewership from
the same areas. This is where Vivo can gain a lot of attention as India has a huge rural
population and other marketing avenues are not as reachable as IPL. The event’s short
format games creates stickiness of audiences, with the perfect match timings, a
nationwide reach, and accessiblility to smaller towns, giving Vivo a chance to build
lasting brand visibility and recall.
Moreover, what brands look for most in sponsoring such an event is the amount of
screen time a deal gets them, which ensures visibility to the audience. This metric is
the first step on a journey to persuading consumers to buy the brand’s goods or
services as without visibility a sponsorship is rarely going to be successful. The title
sponsor “VIVO” can expect their logo to be on screen for more than 200 hours during
the tournament.
Furthermore, IPL is broadcasted in more than 6 languages including Hindi, English,
Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Bangla, across 10 network channels. With its presence
across multiple platforms and multi-language feeds, it helps Vivo in adding
recognition to brand story. This gives a chance to Vivo to reach a diverse range of
audience from sponsoring a single event.
Additionally, IPL captures viewers’ attention for nearly 60 days, which gives Vivo
ample time to create a lasting impact on the audience as well as to utilize the time
frame to launch new products and promotional campaigns across multiple platforms.
Also, the league is officially called as the “Vivo IPL” and the name is associated with
Bollywood celebrities, famous cricketers etc which results in “Vivo” creating a
perception of prestige in the minds of the audience associated with its brand name.
Marketing Integration
As Vivo signed the sponsorship deal for the years 2018-2022, it simultaneously
signed up Bollywood actor Aamir Khan as its brand ambassador and launched new
series of ads featuring Khan. The comapany capitalized on the fact that the two most
followed things in India are Bollowood and Cricket, thereby reaching its audience
from multiple highly popular fields.
Moreover, Vivo uses Facebook and Twitter as the major platforms for running its
campaigns during IPL and ensure engagement with the audience. The content
published on these platforms is centered on IPL contests and other related content and
this oppotunity is used by Vivo to promote their new product launches. The helps
Vivo in building hype and awareness for its new products as well as drive traffic to its
social media channels, thereby building a strong online community. This integrated
campaign on different social media channels along with the brand’s association with
IPL helps Vivo to drive excitement for their product launches and to increase overall
brand awareness.
Furthermore, Vivo also introduced multiple touchpoints for audiences like ‘Vivo Box’
for the luxurious cricket viewing experience, the perfect catch of the match trophy
award, Vivo countdown, multiple online cricket related contests and other such
activities to keep the audience engaged and make them feel more connected with the
brand.
