Liquor brands staged a conspicuous absence from this year’s Indian Premier League (IPL), leading to a 70 percent decline in surrogate advertising. According to data shared by TAM exclusively with Storyboard18, Pernod Ricard was the lone liquor brand actively engaged in advertising during this season’s IPL.
In the previous year, surrogate ads accounted for 1.6 percent of the total advertising share while in IPL 16, this share dropped to 0.7 percent.
This decline in surrogate ad spending can be attributed to the ambiguous nature of liquor advertising regulations in India. While direct liquor advertising is banned by the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), surrogate advertising remains permissible. However, the ASCI’s stricter enforcement of rules against surrogate ads in recent years has made liquor brands more cautious about advertising during the IPL.
Just last year, the Central Consumer Protection Authority issued a notification on ‘Guidelines for Prevention of Misleading Advertisements and Endorsements for Misleading Advertisements, 2022’. Clause 6 of the guidelines said, “No surrogate advertisement or indirect advertisement shall be made for goods or services whose advertising is otherwise prohibited or restricted by law, by circumventing such prohibition or restriction and portraying it to be an advertisement for other goods or services, the advertising of which is not prohibited or restricted by law.”
However, there was also a clear mention of provisions around brand extension that states, “Mere use of a brand name or company name which may also be applied to goods, product or service whose advertising is prohibited or restricted shall not be considered to be surrogate advertisement or indirect advertisement, if such advertisement is not otherwise objectionable as per the provisions set out in these guidelines.”
Strict regulations
The ASCI has its own set of guidelines for brand extensions. In November 2020, the ASCI investigated advertisements for liquor brand extensions appearing during IPL. As a part of the investigation, the following year it banned surrogate advertising of 12 liquor companies.
According to Navin Kathuria, executive vice president – integrated media, DDB Mudra Group, new guidelines on liquor advertising even with surrogate products affected the category advertising quite a bit, especially during IPL 16.
Talking about why IPL is the perfect platform for brands, Kathuria said, “Having 70-80 percent male viewership is the preferred event for liquor brand surrogate advertising. Over the years advertising time on IPL for liquor brands has been increasing and reached 40,000+ seconds on TV in the last season of IPL. With digital gaining prominence, even Hotstar witnessed an increased presence of surrogate advertising for liquor brands.”
However, in IPL 16 quite a few things changed.
“The digital streaming partner changed from Hotstar to JioCinema. And so did the new guidelines for surrogate advertising especially for the liquor category were introduced. There were a lot of unanswered questions and this probably was the reason for surrogate advertising being away from IPL 16. Neither on TV nor on digital did we see any form of surrogate product advertising,” he added.
Back to numbers, last season the advertisers and their corresponding shares were United Breweries at 50 percent, Pernod Ricard India at 45 percent, Carlsberg Beer at three percent and Crown Beers India at two percent. The brands associated included Kingfisher Strong Power Soda, Seagrams Blenders Pride Glassware, Seagrams 100 Pipers Pure Music, Seagrams Imperial Blue (Mineral Water), Seagrams Royal Stag Packaged Drinking Water, Tuborg Zero Packaged Drinking Water, and Budweiser 0.0.
In IPL 16 though, there was a significant and visible shift in advertising dynamics. Pernod Ricard India emerged as the sole advertiser. The only brand associated was Seagram’s Royal Stag Packaged Drinking Water.
Other avenues
Some experts are calling the plummeting ad spends by liquor brands during IPL a blessing in disguise this year.
“Instead of spraying money aimlessly on IPL, brands can focus their tight budgets on opportunities that deliver high engagement and intimacy. The emergence of large-format premium retail outlets has opened up never-before possibilities to create personalised experiences at the point of purchase. Brands can further drive efficiency by partnering with like-minded brands,” said Sourav Ray, chief strategy officer, Cheil India.
“From the launch of Legacy by Bacardi with e-commerce platform Legacy Collective to Bira’s high engagement brand collaborations with trending youth brands to Johny Walker’s larger-than-life premium retail displays, liquor brands are exploring new ways to reach their consumer and winning them too,” he explained.
While liquor advertising remains a grey area in India, the declining presence of liquor brands during the IPL indicates a shift towards stricter regulations and a need for brands to reevaluate their marketing strategies within these constraints.