Apparel Partnership with IPL

C: Alright, may I know what sort of brand are we talking about? 

I: It’s an apparel brand.

C: In apparel, do we know what line of products they are into? 

I: Shirts, Cuff-Links, Ties, Denims. Think of Raymond’s. Walk me through the considerations you will take for the brand. 

C: I’d start with the goal and the vision behind partnering with an IPL team. Does the brand want to appeal to a younger crowd since they are currently primarily into formal wear? Do they want to break free from a mature brand-image.

I: That’s right, the brand wants to become more youthful, contemporary. What other factors would you consider in selecting the team with which to partner?

C: The different factors would be brand-image, each team has a persona and image associated with it, so what kind of team would we want to be associated with, a winning team, a young team, a popular team etc. Then we would look at the location since IPL teams have a regional fan following, the region in which we want to break into most strongly will affect this criterion. Brand Ambassador would be next, do we already have a cricket star as a brand ambassador and do we partner with their team. Competing brands, does the team have a partnership with a competing apparel brand. Major sponsor, where in the list of sponsors are we looking to stand, from the title sponsor to a side association. The associated brands, do we have a conflict with them.   

I: Do you think cost would be a factor too?

C: I am going with the assumption here that since there are just 8 team, and they’re all in the limelight, the cost difference between the highest priced and lowest priced team won’t be as significant. 

I: Fair enough, you spoke about the regional fan following of teams, so would partnering with a Bangalore team hamper our sales in say Delhi?

C: There will be a segment of the market that would be die-hard Delhi fans and might not go for a brand that’s associated with a competitor, but that will most likely be a small segment. There’ll be a larger segment who’ll watch IPL for the entertainment and won’t care much about the brand being associated with the Bangalore team. 

I: Can you estimate how many people in Bangalore would be watching an RCB match?

C: Sure, should I consider a regular league match or some important match like the playoffs?

I: Just take a regular match for now. 

C: Should I estimate the number for a day match or night?

I: Night match.

C: Sure, also should it this match on a week-day or the weekend, say Friday night maybe?

I: How will that matter?

C: Well if it’s a weekday then there would be some students who would have some sort of homework the next day, or people with jobs who would have some tasks and come back from work so their viewership would be affected. 

I: Right, let’s go for a weekday for now.

C: Alright, so assuming a population of 10million people, I’m going to split them into 3 categories, 5-20 years, 20-60 years, and 60+ years of age. The population split I’m taking is 30%, 40%, 40%. Further I’m going to divide them into Cricket watchers and non-Cricket watchers. Among the cricket watchers I’m further divide them into die-hard fans and casual watchers with the assumption that the die-hard fans will watch every match and the casual fans will watch half the matches. Putting the numbers and calculating the final answer comes out to be approximately 2.67million people. 

I: Great. Thank You.