Ormax Media to study advertising effectiveness for IPL Season 4, WC 2011

The new research product, Day After Cricket, will be launched in February to study the effectiveness of cricket advertising.

As media planners, advertisers and viewers gear up for two of the biggest cricket events of the year - World Cup 2011 and IPL Season 4, media research and consulting film Ormax Media is set to launch its new research product, titled Day After Cricket, in February. The product will study the effectiveness of cricket advertising and the recall value of brands that are associated with the game.

Day After Cricket (DAC) will be a syndicated cricket advertising effectiveness research conducted across nine cities, with a sample size of more than 15,000 respondents. The research includes two phases - day-after tracking during the events and post-event ad effectiveness research.

Vispy Doctor, co-founder and director, Ormax Media, says in an official communiqué, "Cricket advertising is very cluttered, with more than 100 brands vying for limited consumer attention spans. With huge investments at stake, it becomes important for an advertiser to know if their brand has managed to make an impact, and whether this impact is short term or long standing. DAC allows an advertiser to understand if their campaign has delivered on the marketing objectives."

DAC will take a brand's performance on various parameters, including ad recall, ad likeability, innovations recall and a series of brand attributes defined as a part of research. More than 60 brands will be tracked during each of the two events. Data will be reported every alternate day, making the findings directly actionable during the two long events. Subscribers will also get access to post-event analysis, which can be used as inputs in planning for future cricket events.

DAC aims to be the definitive cricket advertising research product in India as it plans to handle every aspect of cricket advertising, including sponsorships and innovations. Very importantly, it isolates the impact of non-cricket advertising, allowing a brand to measure the specific benefits gained from cricket investments.

Shailesh Kapoor, co-founder and chief executive officer, Ormax Media, says, "Its model has been tested over several cricket events, including last year's IPL and the current India-South Africa series. The large scale research aims to be the industry currency on cricket ad effectiveness, this year and in the future." The study will be available on subscription for advertisers and media planners, as well as broadcasters.

Going by industry reactions, since tying up with such large scale events take huge investments (sometimes costing more than Rs 10 crore for sponsors), such attempts to derive and understand the impact of brands on consumers' minds will be helpful.

Navin Khemka, senior vice-president, ZenithOptimedia, says, "This is because GRPs cannot help understand the pulse of the market and with such research data, marketers can actually start calculating and measuring the return on investments for their brands."

However, the challenge for such research products will be to help advertisers determine whether the inferences can influence the advertisers to make their money spending decisions.

Says, Amit Ray, president and COO, Lintas Media Group, "In India, advertisers still go by their gut feelings. So - whether the numbers will help advertisers to make their future decision is questionable. Also, while such research can help understand the ROI of the brands from the big ticket properties, it will not be of much use amongst the small ticket properties."

For the record, while the sponsors for IPL Season 4 include Vodafone (Presenting), Videocon (Presenting), Samsung, LG, Hyundai, PepsiCo, Tata Photon, Havells, Cadbury and Godrej, the sponsors for the World Cup include Maruti, PepsiCo, Reliance, Hero Honda, Castrol, Reebok and LG.