IPL vs SUPER BOWL
Posted 8 years ago
There’s no denying that in today’s date, sporting activities have become increasingly popular as sources of recreation with cricket emerging as the ubiquitous favourite in India. To contrast the vast outreach of cricket in our nation, the US of A brings American football to the table with the National Football League (NFL) commanding the attention of millions of fans. The enormous pull that these 2 sports possess is exploited to the fullest during their individual premier sporting events: the Indian Premier League (IPL) in..er..India, and the Super Bowl in America.
The Super Bowl is America’s annual football championship game that is held in the late summer of every year. Played on a Sunday, the day is almost treated as a de facto national holiday with the potential of raking in a billion spectators globally. On the other hand, the IPL needs no introduction to any Indian. Given our enormous strength of population, choosing to televise and sensationalize the league T20 format of India’s favourite religion/sport was truly a cha-cha-ching moment for advertisers, brands, teams, team owners, and channels alike. In 2016, viewership reached 335 million viewers!
Given the tremendous popularity of these events, it is not surprising that advertisers scramble for prime time slots to telecast their ads without any qualms about the substantial broadcast rates, often extending to millions and beyond. Apart from the game itself, viewers are hooked on to the creative and catchy commercials that do the rounds when these lavish events are aired. Cases in point are the Wix.com and Mountain Dew Ads that arrested viewer’s attention with their unusual themes and engaging story lines during the Big Game of Super Bowl 2016. The Wix campaign drove home the fact that a smart advertisement has to be backed with a stunning website to boost sales. The hilarious and eccentric ‘PuppyMonkeyBaby’ concept of Mountain Dew was bang on and had everyone going gaga about the motto – ‘Three is better than one’!
Closer home, the Maruti Alto, MakeMyTrip and Bournvita ads gripped the nation during IPL 2016 and garnered accolades by virtue of their creative concepts and heart-warming messages that struck a chord with many. While Maruti Alto celebrated the first ride of its 3 million loyal customers with its ‘Pehli Sawaari’ campaign, malted drink brand Bournvita went a step ahead and admonished the age old practice of judging a child’s merit with a report card score only and stressed upon the need to focus on the overall learning process. MakeMyTrip decided to touch upon the common dilemma of finding the right hotel and came up with an innovative theme to emphasise on the quick search feature of their app to locate and compare hotel prices, facilities etc. They also managed to enrol the services of 2 of India’s hottest crowd pulling Bollywood celebs – Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt. Indeed, much thought has gone into the making of these engaging ads and they are sure to keep us hooked as we gear up for another season of our favourite stress busters!















































