NEW DELHI: The Pepsi brand/ad has emerged
as the most
likable brand with 30 per cent respondents of a survey rooting for
it during the India-Zimbabwe cricket match on 19 February, while Ravi
Shastri, Tony Greig and Sanjay Manjrekar (in that order) were found
to be the top three commentators with the
maximum number of respondents watching the do or die
cricket match on MAX (69 per cent).
Interestingly, amongst the cricket-related programmes on various
channels ESPN-Star’s after-match analysis Follow Through
was the second most-watched programme (21 per cent), after MAX’s
Extraaa Innings (44.2 per cent). Similar shows on DD and
also ESPN-Star’s pre-match show Taking Guard had low
viewership of below 10 per cent and 13.4 per cent, respectively,
according to an online research on World Cup advertising carried
out by the Bangalore-based Cross-Tab.
Cross-Tab, which carried out the survey for the India-Zimbabwe
match amongst 551 respondents spread over eight cities, claims the
rationale behind the survey was to gauge things like recall value
of an ad, how they fare vis-à-vis competition, the likeability
factor of an ad or a brand and the reasons for it and whether the
brand advertised get associated with the event, that is cricket.
“To give advertisers/media planners some effective tool by
which they’ll know the effectiveness of advertising on the
World Cup,” is how Cross-Tab explains the reason for carrying
out the survey. The partner portals for the survey included criclive.com,
cricnext.com, and megamaal.com.
But if MAX is thinking it has been able to woo women who are housewives
as viewers, they have something to think about. A gender break-up
of the viewer profile for the said survey showed that only 12 per
cent constituted housewives, while the majority (39 per cent) of
viewership was made up of students.
While 19.9 per cent of people fell under the executive (middle
level) category, 11.4 per cent would be categorised as executive
(junior level). More importantly, 90 per cent of the viewership,
as per the survey, constituted males.
The Mandiras, Mariahs and the Sandhyas, holding forth on ways to
do surfing, cricket culinary and reporting on the sight and sounds
of Africa, seem to have brought in male viewers by the hordes, apart
from the hard core cricket enthusiast.
Is that why a fairly large percentage of people polled switched
to ESPN to watch the likes of Sunil Gavaskar, Harsha Bhogle and
Navjot Singh Sidhu analyse the match, bored with Charu Sharma’s
(placed at No. 13 in the Top Commentators List) repetitive `your
thought on the issue’ line and inadequacy to analyse the finer
points of cricket?
Maximum viewership also came for the India-Zimbabwe match between
6-9 pm where an hourly breakup shows that eyeballs ranged between
84 and 96 per cent.
Pepsi leads the way for likeablity of an ad/brand (30 per cent),
followed by the likes of Coke’s Chota Coke ad (21.1 per cent),
reliance India Mobile (9.4 per cent), Pepsi Blue (5.4 per cent)
and Bajaj Pulsar (4.9 per cent).
Official sponsors’ ads like that of Hero Honda and LG do not
fare well on the likeability barometer. Hero Honda Ambition ad clocked
just 0.4 per cent, while LG’s CDMA mobile phone campaign also
had the backing of just 0.4 per cent respondents.
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