Pepsi IPL Brand Buzz Report

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PEPSI IPL

BBI REPORT


PEPSI IPL

WHO STOLE THE SHOW? OBJECTIVE: Gauging Pepsi’s brand connect with consumers around IPL. Was it worth it?

Measuring the contribution of conversations to brand equity.

PRELUDE: The main ingredient or the pull factor of IPL has always been its controversies—its

association with Bollywood, which provides the game with the much needed

traction: the exact tinge of sauciness to keep consumers glued to this entertainment

extravaganza.

The questions here are:

Did the engagement around IPL pay off, and how?

Did the attention it garnered provoke a meaningful reaction in favour of the brand?

What did the conversations and mentions translate to?

KEY PLAYERS: The key players in this show besides brand IPL were the respective Teams, Primary

Sponsors, and the Celeb Owners, their Bollywood counterparts who scrambled all

over each other to grab their share of eyeballs. Now that IPL is over, let’s look at how

Pepsi fared. (All the data has been collated from 3rd April to 26th May)


THE PEPSI DRP (DIGITAL RATING POINT) LET’S LOOK AT PEPSI’S OVERALL PERFORMANCE: Pepsi started slow, gearing up only during the 2nd week of IPL with a growth rate of

50%. It managed to stay steady until its BBI scores fell again by 4% during the 2nd

week of May. But in the last 2 weeks of IPL, Pepsi shot up with a 20% growth.

GROWTH RATE:

Did the engagement around IPL affect the brand’s overall digital

performance? The 94.1% jump from pre-IPL suggests that the answer is an

astounding ‘Yes’.


HOW DID IT FARE AGAINST ALL THE OTHER IPL BRANDS AND SPONSORS? COMPARING OVERALL BBI SCORES: Both Vodafone and Pepsi piggybacked on IPL—they rode this wave right to the top.

Pepsi put itself in top gear towards the end of the tournament and zoomed past

Chennai Super Kings, who had dominated BBI IPL charts since the tournament

began.

Nokia is the only one brand among sponsors whose admirable BBI score can’t be

attributed solely to IPL. The brand’s digital strategy maintains its score throughout the

year, IPL or no IPL.

Does this mean that brands like Pepsi are overly depended on events like IPL

to be visible in the digital space?

BBI SCORES:

DOES A HIGH BBI SCORE INDICATE GOOD PERFORMANCE?


1. POPULARITY: LET’S LOOK AT HOW MUCH OF THAT BUZZ RESONATED THROUGHOUT THE DIGITAL SPACE. THE PERFORMANCE BREAKDOWN The Popularity score is an indication of users’ activities on multiple platforms, the

amount of content (mentions) generated, and the level of engagement on its web

asset.

Pepsi’s Popularity score mirrors the same ups and downs of its overall performance and also indicates that brand activity was at its lowest from 7th-15th May, and highest from 19th-26th May. What impacted these scores?

One of the variables to have impacted the scores is: Low traffic to the site in the

same period (refer to chart below).

Comparing traffic patterns of

Pepsi to those of other brands

indicates that unlike Pepsi,

other brands have enjoyed

stable inflow of traffic

throughout the season. This

rippled pattern seen with

Pepsi is also common in

brands that heavily rely on

‘media’ to draw traffic to the

web asset.


BUZZ VOLUME OR THE AMOUNT OF CONTENT GENERATED ALSO IMPACTS POPULARITY SCORE AND WHERE DID THESE MENTIONS COME FROM? BUZZ VOLUME:

Below is a graph that captures just how much volume the brand generated and

where it generated its mentions.

The massive volumes on Twitter and News overshadowed all the other digital

channels. Although the brand started out relatively strong, it slumped mid-IPL and

ended the season in a big peak.

On one hand, this indicates that the audience on Twitter responded well to brand

activity, but on the other hand, there are big volumes of News, which on digital is

likened to the traditional ‘one-way’ communication channel where mentions don’t

translate to Conversation or Engagement.


LET’S ANALYSE THE SENTIMENTS BEHIND THE MENTIONS: There are more Neutral mentions than there are Positive mentions. What counts as

Neutral mentions?

Most ‘Mentions’ during IPL did not carry any sentiment behind them; they did not

express any opinion or feeling towards the brand in any respect. They were simply

robotic responses to questions dished out during the brand’s engagement activities

on social platforms.

These mentions in turn contribute towards brand exposure rather than brand equity.

HERE’S WHAT THE KEYWORD ANALYSIS TELLS US: Most of the keywords associated with

the brand have more to do with the

usage of “PepsiIPL”, it being the title

sponsor of IPL 6 used in conversations

around teams, players, and

performances. These conversations are

not directly related to the brand, nor

are they about the brand;; they’re

simply about its association with IPL.

SENTIMENT ANALYSIS

Positive Mentions

Negative Mentions

Neutral Mentions


THE POSITIVE: NOT ALL CONVERSATIONS WERE BAD Positive Conversations for Pepsi consist of the variables:

1. Brand I Love

2. Is Good For Everyday

3. Good Brand Image (a mention or conversation that compliments the brand for

its actions/activity)

Today these conversations, especially with IPL around, are few and far between, so

the brand needs to provoke more of the following conversations:

These are a handful of conversations that were both sincere, and at least one of

them unprovoked. Does the lack of conversations that were unprovoked by

‘Contests’ indicate a lack of connect with the brand itself? Quite possibly.

Emotion Behind Postive Sentiment

brand I love good branding


2. ENGAGEMENT WERE THE FANS ENTERTAINED?

Unlike Popularity,

Engagement kept to a

steady growth line. It

reached its peak

during the first week of

May and retained it

until the end of the

tournament.

IPL GAMES BROUGHT TO YOU BY PEPSI To engage users, multiple contests were conducted on the brand’s asset, and social

media was used to drive users to the gameplay.

But were they really interested in more games?

Not as much, because they

really just wanted to talk

about cricket. It was always

all about cricket. They could

have stopped for

refreshments if prompted, but

instead they were asked to

leap further into more

gameplay.

As the graph above clearly shows, fans were more interested in talking about their

own team, battling it out, expressing their joy/disappointment, or indulging in jokes

by mocking “Sir Ravindra Jadeja”.


DEPTH OF PARTICIPATION THERE ARE THOSE WHO WATCHED, BUT HOW MANY PLAYED FOR PEPSI?

For all the contests and games

conducted by the brand, a total of

954 unique authors were engaged

around the brand’s activity on digital.

The number of unique authors indicates two things:

1. The total number of NEW users who were exposed to the brand, and

2. The ones who contributed towards brand (Pepsi) content or participated ‘ONCE’

in any one of the engagement activities online.

Below is a chart showing unique authors by platform: the chart clearly illustrates that

most of the unique authors originated from Twitter and Facebook. The period from

28th April to 11th May saw an increase in Unique Authors’ Entries from YouTube,

particularly on 8th May when Pepsi Atom TVC was uploaded.

UNIQUE AUTHORS BY PLATFORM:


3. CONVERSATION DID ENGAGEMENT PROVOKE CONVERSATIONS? Even though Pepsi led the

charge in terms of

Conversation at the start of

IPL, Nokia clearly leveraged

the medium to provoke

more conversations that

are not limited to IPL, which

is perhaps one thing that

worked to their advantage.

WAS IT PEPSI OR IPL? Twitter was extensively used to engage with fans (as indicated in the graph above),

but the most prized property was being a part of the official hashtag this IPL:

#PepsiIPL.

This is a clear indication:

1. Of users preferring #IPL to #PEPSIIPL, as they do not feel compelled to use the

official hashtag unless there’s something in it for them (contest = gratification)

2. That most users are talking about skipping Pepsi because they think that the

brand doesn’t lend itself naturally to conversations around ‘cricket’, that is, no

context. #OhYesAbhi garnered a mere 856 mentions.


BRAND CONVERSATIONS WHAT WORKED? The chart below showcases the Top 3 posts that received the maximum number of

comments.

The value of comments as a variable is relatively high due to the added effort put in

by the users, as compared to a ‘Like’. Has this effort paid off for the brand?

All comments on the page were solely the result of contests around cricket. All of the

3 posts leveraged IPL on the platform; the brand itself seemed to take a backseat

and not actively and contextually blend itself in conversations with the users.

Posts Total Comments

Date

Two cool captains will compete against each other in today Pepsi IPL match. Who are you supporting Chennai Super kings ya Rajasthan Royals? Batao oh yes abhi!!!

3795

27-04-2013

Found the seriously talented player hiding here. Pepsi IPL VIP Box Race code – Gambhir

2547

11-05-2013

Tonight the Knights will fight with the Kings! Who do you think will win the battle?

2439

27-04-2013


4. VIRALITY: MEASURING THE REACH OF ACTIVITIES Virality Scores tell us if brand generated content was sharable. The chart below

mirrors the trend on all other dimensions—both the highs and the lows.

Reach sheds a light on the measure of influence earned by the brand, which is also

the number of unique authors for the brand during the IPL campaign period.

Together, the graph illustrates how viral content might not translate to ‘Unique (New)

Authors’, whose numbers indicate a measure of brand exposure.

VIRALITY SCORES AND REACH:

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Virality REACH


BRANDED CONTENT THAT WORKED TOP VIRAL CONTENT TOP TWEETS:

The first 2 posts are contest posts with the maximum retweets. They simply indicate

the increased exposure of the contest. The 3rd tweet on the other hand is a ‘Brand

Tweet’, focusing not on IPL but on the brand itself.

Pepsi Post Retweet Count Date If this tweet crosses a thousand RTs before midnight, we will reveal a big surprise for you tomorrow! #PepsiIPL

328 01-04-2013

Wanna watch a #PepsiIPL match in the Pepsi VIP Box? Go to http://t.co/03l7jdMfUX and score runs now now now!

54 06-05-2013

All you need in this scorching heat is a chilled Pepsi. RT if you agree ;) http://t.co/kMDZx4mubL 48 06-05-2013

TOP VIDEO:

Among all of Pepsi’s Brand ambassadors, Priyanka Chopra’s video seems to have

garnered the maximum number of view for the brand.

MOST VIEWED VIDEO NUMBER OF VIEWS

Pepsi IPL 2013 playlist: Pepsi IPL Oh Yes Abhi Priyanka Chopra Film 7,21,060

Do 7 lac views really qualify as viral? Here’s the most viewed video on RCB.

MOST VIEWED VIDEO NUMBER OF VIEWS

The most viewed RCB video: Virat Kohli drives Chris Gayle around Delhi in his Audi 4,09,37,380

For Pepsi, Virality and Reach simply translated to increased exposure, not

meaningful perhaps, as the content most shared was focused and centered on

cricket and not the brand itself.


THE COMPETITION Coca-Cola India While Pepsi outdid Coke in the run for title sponsor for IPL, Coke stuck to its

sponsorship of team Delhi Daredevils.

Although the digital scores of Delhi Daredevils don’t equally match those of Coke, it

does indicate that the brand rode on the team it sponsored, not unlike Pepsi, but it

definitely didn’t enjoy the same kind of exposure that Pepsi did.

THE MOVE Although Pepsi

reigned this IPL,

making its presence

almost unavoidable,

Coke broke this hold

to steal perhaps a

little bit of thunder.

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Overall BBI Scores

DD Pepsi


WHILE PEPSI PLAYS GAMES, COKE IS BUSY BUILDING AND MENDING BONDS, SPREADING HAPPINESS.

Stories are not made but told,

and Coke proved that with the

“Coke vending machine”,

which was placed in 2

countries (India and Pakistan),

hoping to connect individuals

through a series of

heartwarming and simple

gestures that prove that we are

in fact not so different as forces

would have us believe.

The strength of the story of this campaign, which began pre-IPL, end of March, still

resonates throughout the web.

This is the kind of Brand Equity that Pepsi should aim for—an idea, a revolution that

provokes and strikes a chord. Make them feel it.


KEY TAKEAWAYS

Pepsi definitely made an explosive mark on IPL, just by being its title sponsor. This

sponsorship translated to maddening exposure, which as multiple reports

suggest further, resulted in brand recall, which is not surprising. But this exposure

was the direct result of its relationship with IPL. In other words, brand Pepsi took a

back seat and was overpowered by ‘cricket’.

This exposure is less meaningful when it’s not supported by sentiment for the

brand itself. Will Pepsi sustain this recall?

Will fans engage sans carrot? Pepsi leveraged IPL with multiple contests to

engage users throughout the season. The engagement focused on and took

advantage of their love for cricket with “tempting” gratifications that every

cricket fan would die for, but will fans engage with the brand once that carrot is

retracted? Coke proved that meaningful engagement doesn’t always require

the traditional ‘what’s in it for me’, just a powerful idea to connect.

Is piggybacking on IPL or any other event the right digital approach? The

medium allows the brand to meaningfully engage with its fans, but in the end,

cricket was too overpowering for the brand to compete with. The brand simply

became the 3rd wheel between the fans and their game.

Pepsi IPL Brand Buzz Report

Sports

Transcript of Pepsi IPL Brand Buzz Report