Ranveer Singh and MS Dhoni are most recalled brand ambassadors in the Indian Institute of Human Brands (IIHB) study on advertising recall in IPL 2021. Shah Rukh Khan topped the report in 2019 and MS Dhoni was at No. 1 in 2020.
Raucous Ranveer versus Dreamy Dhoni!?! Well both seem to have done equally well in the annual IPL ad recall research of the Indian Institute of Human Brands (IIHB) conducted ten days after the start of the League this year. The research polled 879 respondents in the age-group of 18-35 years (M=481, F=398) across India. The interviews were conducted telephonically.
Dream 11 was the most spontaneously recalled brand in this year’s survey, which possibly also helped enhance both the brand equity and recall of MS Dhoni who anchored the 12-ad series for the brand as its ambassador and protagonist. Jio Fiber, with multiple IPL teams featured with an effervescent Ranveer Singh gyrating with a sing-song brand message, came in second on recall in the research, also helping the celebrity endorser to considerably strengthen his personal recall. Byju’s was the most spontaneously recalled brand on the IPL last year; though its celebrity endorser Shah Rukh Khan trailed behind other celebrities.
Virat Kohli, as expected did well on recall too and came third in the recall rankings. Salman Khan did surprisingly well in this year’s survey and came in at No. 4, ahead of Rishabh Pant, Rahul Dravid, Varun Dhawan, Alia Bhatt and Saurav Ganguly who followed in that sequence. Ajay Devgn, Sachin Tendulkar, Shikhar Dhawan, Shah Rukh Khan, Boman Irani, Kareena Kapoor, Ranbir Kapoor, Katrina Kaif, Ayushmann Khurrana and Akshay Kumar, on the other hand, had very few mentions and scored very poorly on respondent recall. There were sporadic mentions of Virender Sehwag and Priyanka Chopra too.
In the last survey conducted in October 2020, MS Dhoni had the highest spontaneous recall as a celebrity endorser. Virat Kohli was a not-so-close second. Akshay Kumar was at rank 3; Ayushmann Khurrana at rank 4.
“MS Dhoni and Ranveer Singh had a disproportionate share of visibility and recall in the IPL research we just conducted. This was in synch with the ultra-high recall of the brands they respectively endorse”, said Dr. Sandeep Goyal, Chief Mentor of IIHB. “It is interesting nevertheless to note that brands without celebrities like Phone Pe, Byju’s and others too have done well wherever media investments are heavy”.
IIHB team used its proprietorial CELEBAR tool based on Celebrity Brand Association & Recognition 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 & celebrity together
-Recency of communication
-Media weight behind campaign
-Solus versus multiple brands using the celebrity
MS Dhoni had a CELEBAR score of 87, up from 82 at the last IPL. His spontaneous recall was an unusually high 82 per cent. His association with Dream 11 was also very constant at 79 per cent from the last edition. He got nine per cent association with IPL/Star TV, eight per cent brand association with Indigo Paints, six per cent with Orient Fans for Orient Fans and Livfast Solar. Two per cent recall came from SunFeast Yippee. So, most of Dhoni’s brand goodness got hijacked by Dream 11, much like last year.
If Dhoni had only been endorsing Dream 11, his CELEBAR score would have been near 100, given his strong association with that one brand, to almost the relative exclusion of the other brands he endorses.
Ranveer achieved a CELEBAR score of 86, empirically almost equal to that of MS Dhoni. But his association was more democratically spread with Jio Fiber at 56 per cent, JD mart at 48 per cent, My11Circle at 22 per cent and Bingo at 18 per cent. Names of some other brands were mentioned by respondents but these were filtered out as they were not part of the IPL broadcast.
Both MS Dhoni and Ranveer gained massively also on account of their main brands spending disproportionately large amounts of media monies which made them exponentially more visible than other competing celebrities.
Virat Kohli trailed far behind the Top 2. His score of 45 on CELEBAR is mostly derived by his 94 per cent association with MRF tyres. Bluestar is in low single digits on association.
Salman Khan at a CELEBAR of 38, owes 82 per cent recall to Rajshree elaichi and the balance to Pepsi. Rishabh Pant climbed up interestingly to No. 5 on the strength of his JSW appearances. Varun Dhawan had 76 per cent of his recall from Lux Cozi and much lower from Frooti. Alia owed most her recall also to Frooti with scattered mentions of Dark Fantasy.
Interestingly, the IPL seems to be running no/few ads with Amitabh Bachchan, Akshay Kumar, Deepika Padukone, Ranbir Kapoor, and even with cricketers Rohit Sharma or KL Rahul or Hardik Pandya, or the media weightages behind those ads were too insignificant to be noticed by viewers.
The Cred ad for Rahul Dravid was spontaneously recalled by 17 per cent respondents but only two per cent remembered Jackie Shroff and only obe per cent mentioned Kumar Sanu for the same brand.
Mutual Funds (AMFI) ads had 22 per cent recall but most respondents got the protagonists mixed up, with the most attributing the messaging to Dhoni and Kohli.
Dream 11’s association with multiple cricketers was mentioned by many respondents but most were not sure if they remembered current creatives. Only the connect with MS Dhoni was unambiguous.
Despite heavy media weights, Vimal elaichi ad featuring Ajay Devgn and Shah Rukh Khan had only an eight per cent recall. Netmeds with Kareena Kapoor and Renuka Shahane had a good nine per cent recall. Priyanka Chopra’s Appy Fizz and Katrina’s Slice were almost not recalled. Hema Malini managed three per cent recall on Kent RO. Randhir Kapoor’s Asian Paints managed four per cent while, Kareena Kapoor’s and Pankaj Tripathi’s Berger creatives both got below obe per cent. Ayushmann was remembered by less than one per cent in Urban Company. Gajaraj Rao was mentioned in less than obe per cent for Voltas. Unacademy featuring Sunil Gavaskar and Harsha Bhogle too scored poorly at two per cent. Gamezy featuring KL Rahul got less than one per cent recall.
On the ads without celebrities, the most remembered were Phone Pe (32 per cent), Byju’s (31 per cent), Vivo (22 per cent), One Plus (21 per cent), Groww (20 per cent), Upstox (20 per cent), Kia (19 per cent), MPL (18 per cent), Bisleri (11 per cent), PharmEasy (11 per cent), Thums Up(nine per cent), Coca Cola (six per cent), Renault Kiger (six per cent), Tata Safari (six per cent), Skoda (three per cent), Ajio (three per cent), Dark Fantasy (two per cent), LikedIn (two per cent), Raymond (two per cent) and Tuborg (one per cent).
As more gets added to the broadcast as the IPL progresses, both standings of celebrities and recall of brands may change.
Dr. Sandeep Goyal can be contacted
sandeep@goyalmail.com +91 98100 16661
Indian Institute of Human Brands (IIHB)
1401, Lodha Supremus
Worli
