Nielsen says F&B brands rule recall in IPL-6

The inglorious end to the sixth season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) will not deter advertisers from assessing their bets on the event's viewership - after all, they had put in their media moneys. Around 120 advertisers made themselves visible on IPL-6 through either spot buys or sponsorships, shelling out Rs 375,000-400,000 per 10 seconds during the latest edition.

Nielsen, the leading global provider of information and insights, has done a recent study called, "Does your TVC cut through the clutter", on which brands were able to get heard above the din during IPL, 2013.

The study on unaided, spontaneous brand recall showed that the TVC by Mondelez' Cadbury Silk was the most recalled, by 24 per cent of the respondents, followed by Parle Agro's Appy Fizz (23 per cent), GlaxoSmithKline's Boost (20 per cent), PepsiCo's 7UP (19 per cent) and its Pepsi (17 per cent), and Vodafone with its mini Zoozoos (13 per cent).

"As per industry numbers, there are about 19,000 ad exposures aired per month by over 130 advertisers, on a given channel today. But an insight into which ad the audience recalls and how much of the television commercial it retains is critical information for marketers and advertisers to gauge the impact of their ad," says Surjya Roy, director, Nielsen India.

Covering over 5,800 respondents in its first three waves, and then 4,235 more in the next two, across the cities of Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai, the study was conducted between the 2nd of May and 3rd of June, 2013, during the airing of IPL.

Roy explains, "Sporting events such as the IPL, offer marketers and advertisers a large captive audience that they can reach out to with their brand message as the time spent by consumers during such events are high. Hence, it is critical for them to evaluate the impact in terms of visibility and recall the TVC has among viewers. Taking this key insight, our study helps the industry in understanding the relation between exposure of an advertisement to actual consumer recall, and hence, facilitates in fine-tuning the media plan and marketing budgets effectively for brands."

Recall for Cadbury Silk's ad increased from 23 per cent in the first and second wave to 27 per cent in the third wave of the study. Appy Fizz moved marginally from 25 per cent to 24 per cent, while PepsiCo's 7UP dropped 3 percentage points from 21 per cent in the first wave to 18 per cent in the third wave.

"The findings of the study indicate two driving characteristics of spontaneously-recalled brands: Advertisements that feature a celebrity, or have an impactful creative, have higher chances of registering in viewers' minds. The most-recalled have a steady mix of both", Roy adds.

Understandably, food and beverages lead as a sector, with brands from it garnering recall from 91 per cent of the over-10,000 polled. Three-fifths (59 per cent) of the respondents also recalled TVCs of other FMCG brands.

Telecom (34 per cent), infrastructure (23 per cent) and consumer durables (19 per cent) also made it to the top five sectors that had a high spontaneous ad recall.