"Yeh Analysis mein krr leta hu, aap D11 mein team bana lo"

As I meander on my monotonous and leisured evening now a days, I was asked a question by a friend of mine "What do you think is the best content strategy". While ideally my leisured self, engrossed onto the digital face of my lappy, would not bother much answering the question, but it's this face that poked the curiosity in me to write my second article on LinkedIn. Well, firstly, a disclaimer, for all that it means, I mean no harm to any “stakeholder” who I might mention in this article. As I observe my current serene white word sheet getting scarred with black characters of emotion pouring from my fingers I, am reminded of a very similar incident which happened around 4 months from now last year. It was tensed, nervy, it was bout revealing what had been hidden for so many years from so many of my loved one’s. It was an assignment submission on the topic of “Advertisement Review” and I had decided to break down the jingle, “Umeedo Waali Dhoop” of Coka Cola.?

Well, by now, I’m sure many of you might be wondering what am I blabbering about. I mean, the header line is quite clearly referencing to something, or in financial term, an entity most Indians would know by now. But here I am writing about my emotions, my past and what not. Well, that’s not true! Lecture 3, Subject IMC or Integrated Marketing Communication – submission topic, “do an external 4C analysis for your brand in the chosen category” and that had let my wings fly high into the world of MarCom. And here I am, writing this article, with a desire to understand my subject, IMC, while crackling down Dream11’s campaigns during the IPL.

What is Marketing Communication? If you had to ask me, I’ll again close my eyes and mince the words of my greatest educator, Mr. Rishabha Nayar. It’s about ensuring that a brand remains the talk of the town, always 24/7 being in the conversation. And it’s no more of making a consumer pass through the old jargons of “AWARENESS”, “INTEREST”, “DESIRE”, NO!. Today’s MarCom is a 365 days * 24/7 * 500 touch points * 10,000 bytes of data * 666 lux of exposure from your iphones and tablets * recyclable wrappers * disposable/refillable containers * 15 billboards displaying GREEN WHATSAPP advertisement at SoBo. That’s marcom. And yeah, Meta advertises whatsapp heavily in SoBo because majority uses iphones and apple messenger.?

So, what is Dream11 doing so special that I need to suddenly write an article on it? Well, for a fact, it isn’t doing much. It’s just running a TV ad. Rather 2. For the rest of the activities, we’ll possible discuss them on a one-on-one call, but let’s get it straight. Out of the trillions on MarCom that a modern-day brand like Dream11 undertakes this article is about those 2 advertisements that’s transformational in terms of imparting knowledge to marketing studs like me – on the role of advertising.

I guess, by now it’s imperative that if you have stuck through my traumatic English, then you deserve to know which advertisements am I talking about? So, yeah, by now you must have guessed one of the two advertisements – it’s the ad which has lots of crickets stopping various individuals from doing modern pop-culture activities and asking them to make their teams in the Dream11 app while they do it. Quite a lot of cricketers are seen endorsing it. The advertisement is funny no doubt, and it serve the vintage roles of advertisement – ensuring brand recall. I’ll call this version 1.?

But then which is the other one? Well, it has 2 version as much as I could see, featuring Bumrah and Pant. This advertisement is contrastingly different from the lively pumpy advert which has the pop culture outlook. This one is more serious, it’s deeper, and triggers a struggle striking an emotional chord with the audience. It showcases the cricketers narrating how in their struggles towards becoming the superstar they are today; they had received support from unlikely sources who encouraged them to dream. The advertisement ends by a message from the cricketers encouraging users not to give up on dreaming of winning big and that it’s absolutely cool to dream big. I’ll call this version 2 here on.?

Now, let us break these to down and try and understand why did Dream11 have to come up with this very different advertisement, and why is it running both these two advertisements together? Well for that, we need to go back to what I call the guide book for all marketing solutions – the 4 step creative solution process.?

Step 1:?Goal Setting

Identify and elucidate clearly, what is going to be the end goal of the MarCom. When we say goal, it’s not just a vague qualitative jargons – it‘s ALWAYS, ALWAYS comprising of aspects. These include specificity, measurability, tracibility etc. Let’s compare the Dream 11 advertisements for two IPL year. The first version, interestingly enough has a clear and simple end goal – it wants more and more users to join Dream11. That’s why it says – “go make your team now!”. In the modern lingo – we call it “customer acquisition” and it’s very easily identifiable. They want individuals, to stop doing what they are doing, download the app and make their teams. However, what’s the goal of the second version of the advertisement? Well, for starters, I’m not 200% sure. It can be customer acquisition, but if you ask me, I can see a clear message underlying the emotional depiction. It encourages individuals to DREAM BIG. Now, what’s the goal? Well, let me hold that thought just for a moment and lemme draw you towards step 2 of creative marcom designing.?

Step 2:?Deeping dive into external and internal analysis

Now, once the goal has been set, for a brand, they need to perform, what my professor called a 4C analysis. And this analysis was life transformational for me. Better than all the PESTELS and Porter of this world. However, for the purpose of this article, let us take the 2nd?advertisement as an example and go on and understand the framework.?

The framework begins by understanding the trends in the?Category?and the?Competition. For Dream11 we’ll observe, that while the market in India is still new and developing, there’s still a huge potential in terms of customer acquisition. Alongside this, if we look at the current market, each of these brands has a huge upside and a potential to make super normal profits. This naturally attracts a lot of competition. Market is not yet consolidated with a lot of players offering similar to near similar offerings from the likes of Mobile Premier League, Hitwicket and many more. Albeit, Dream11 holds crazy amount of market share in the space.?

The other 2C goes a bit on the internal side, loosely speaking. They stand for?Customers?and?Culture. Now, customers of Dream11 are aged between 25 to 35. The young and new working class of the country who are interested in cricket as well as the world of fantasy players. However, the perception of fantasy leagues, irrespective of how fancy it may be named, is still that of “Baazi Laagana” or “Juwa” or betting. Infact, I distinctly remember my friend last year saying, that it’s ironic how the biggest/largest mega celebration of the year Pan-India has a gambling app as it’s major sponsor.?

Step 3:?Identify the tension in the consumer’s mind

Let’s move into the penultimate stage. Now imagine yourself, in the shows of a 9th?standard student solving his mathematic final exam. He’s objective is simple. Read the problem, understand the problem and solve it using skillsets that he possesses. Something similar is true here on. For Dream11, it’s about understanding what’s the tension in the minds of its core consumer and thereby communicating to them how Dream11 best solves that. Marcom, in it’s true sense, is a brand saying to its consumer “rest assure, I have a solution to your problems”.?

For version 1 of the advertisement, it was simple – D11 realized that their core consumers considered pop-culture references to be making reels etc as trendy and fun. Now, they also realized that betting money, which you’ll agree, for a highly aspirational Indian youth was not “trendy” and certainly wasn’t something which could have proudly acclaimed to be associated with. Gambling still doesn’t have pan-Indian acceptance. Thus, they needed to make D11 considered to be trendy as well. And who else than the mega icons of cricket, the likes of Dhoni, Rohit, Rishabh etc. They give you authority, credibility and reach.?

Now let’s look at version 2. Where do we stand right now? Presently, we are aware of D11, D11 knows it. But still, there’s are two emotions which people might be facing. Firstly, the fact that while it’s part of modern Indian youth’s pop-culture – it still is regarded a bit of a fun activity. Maybe a one-time watch. However, they do not take it seriously enough. Infact, the second fact is led from the first, is that it isn’t taken seriously because people do not believe they can win much. After all it’s gambling. Only a select few would win. Mostly, people would just breakeven, or lose and thus soon get disheartened and might just leave the app. So they realized, that in the minds of themselves, their friends and their family, everyone together needs to overhaul the value and importance of D11, a gambling app – have more trust in the game!

Thus, when we compare, we clearly see two very different creative message which comes out of the jittery sensitive consumer minds.

Step 4:?Creating the Media Planning Strategy

Now, lastly, we move onto to the media planning – a much more mathematic, less creative exercise of this entire creative juggernaut. Media planning is simple – it’s just about getting the best medium to deliver your creative message (frequency and reach) so as to get the best ROI thereby achieving your end objective/initial goal. But here also, we see an interesting facet for D11 – we see, two very different versions of a D11 advertisement, both of which running at the same time, albeit with different frequencies, but on the same platform (for me, it was Disney+Hotstar).?

You tell me, isn’t this kinda confusing? I mean, you are running 2 very, almost contrasting messages at the same time – you make it trendy, yet make it serious. You give it authority yet you tough an emotional chord of building trust in the app? What on earth is D11 doing?

Well, and here I’m complete shooting in the dark, but I believe, the sole objective of this entire exercise by D11, not just running the two adverts, but the whole process of creating 2 messages has 1 deeper connection. As we alluded to in the beginning, the goal of version 2. And this deeper connection is something that almost all brands are trying their best so in the modern era of cut-throat competition and building a brand that stands out in the era of CLUTTER. It’s the process of building?Trust!

If you want, you can re-read everything which I wrote, barring the initial paras of course as that’s junk, and analyse all the statements which I was writing. And while you read it, think out loud, is it anything different than building trust in a brand? Are you a loyal follower of brands? Maybe, maybe not. But is there any brand that you prefer yet distrust? I rest my case – “Yeh analysis mein krr deta hu, aap dream11 mein team bana lo.”