While watching the ongoing season of the Indian Premier League (IPL), it is hard to miss out watching ads featuring cricketer MS Dhoni and Bollywood star Ranveer Singh.
During IPL 14, Dhoni is mostly seen endorsing brands like fantasy gaming platform Dream 11, Indigo Paints, Orient Fans and Singh features in ads for brands including Jio Fibre, JD mart and My11Circle.
These brands have made both Dhoni and Singh the most recalled celebrity endorsers during the 14th edition of IPL, according to a survey done by Indian Institute of Human Brands (IIHB).
The survey, which was conducted 10 days after the start of the IPL this year, polled 879 respondents in the age group of 18-35 years.
According to the survey, MS Dhoni has a CELEBAR score of 87, up from 82 in the last IPL. And coming close to Dhoni in terms of ad recall value is Singh who has a CELEBAR score of 86.
CELEBAR is a tool used to assign a metric score to each celebrity and associated brand. The tool takes into account spontaneous recall of the brand, spontaneous recall of the celebrity, association between brand and celebrity together, recency of communication, media weight behind campaign and solus versus multiple brands using the celebrity.
Virat Kohli trailed far behind the top two, the study said. His score of 45 on CELEBAR is mostly derived by his 94 percent association with MRF tyres. Bluestar is in low single digits on association.
When it comes to brands that have led to strong recall value for Dhoni, most of his brand goodness got hijacked by Dream 11. The cricketer's association with Dream 11 was at 79 percent and the rest nine percent, eight percent and six percent came from IPL/Star TV, Indigo Paints, and Orient Fans and Livfast Solar respectively. Only two percent recall came from SunFeast Yippee.
As for Singh, his association is more democratically spread with Jio Fiber at 56 percent, JD mart at 48 percent, My11Circle at 22 percent and Bingo at 18 percent, the study said.
Taking the fourth position in the ad recall value ranking is Salman Khan with a CELEBAR of 38. The actor owes 82 percent recall to Rajshree elaichi and the balance to Pepsi.
Rishabh Pant climbed up to number five position on the strength of his JSW appearances.
In addition, the newly launched advertising by brand The Cred featuring ex-cricketer Rahul Dravid was spontaneously recalled by 17 percent. And only two percent respondents remembered the ad featuring Jackie Shroff and only one percent mentioned Kumar Sanu for the same brand.
An interesting aspect the study mentioned is that brands that did not feature any celebrity in their ads too had strong recall value.
“It is interesting to note that brands without celebrities like Phone Pe, Byju’s and others have done well wherever media investments are heavy,” said Sandeep Goyal, Chief Mentor of IIHB.
Brands that did not feature celebrities and recorded strong recall value include Phone Pe at 32 percent, Byju’s at 31 percent, Vivo at 22 percent, One Plus at 21 percent, Groww at 20 percent and Upstox at 20 percent.
Another interesting take-out from this year’s research was that "female respondents showed higher recall and of having seen a celebrity on the cricket broadcast, but somehow faltered on connecting them to relevant brands," said Goyal.
Female respondents showing higher recall can also be attributed to the growing female viewership for IPL. According to Broadcast Audience Research Council India (BARC) data, 48 percent of IPL viewers are women.
Overall, the first 10 days of IPL 14 were dominated by real-money gaming brands, ed-tech brands, financial products demonstrating the ease of usage and simplicity of transactions.
"There were no bikes, no telecom service providers, nearly no deos. An occasional air-conditioner and refrigerator. The contours of the advertising business are changing," said Goyal.
