Between October 2018 and August 2021, nothing much seems to have changed.
Prithvi Shaw | Sindhu PV
Baseline Ventures
The Economic Times – Gaurav Laghate 🙂
At the core is a question that was initiated in October 2018, probably for the first time this vocally in India, and the same question has gained a lot more prominence during the Olympics, now, in 2021.
The question:
Can brands and companies that are…
a. completely unrelated to the sports personalities,
b. who have not invested in those in those players/athletes and
c. who do not have a formal marketing engagement with them, either directly or through a professional celebrity management firm,
… use their names, photos (actual photos or recreated drawings or images), and the achievement in their own marketing communication, either online or offline (print, billboard) or both?
Some of the most commonly used arguments for saying that they can:
- The brands are not selling their own products and services. They are merely joining the celebration of an Indian player/athelete.
- The brands do not allude that the player/athlete is endorsing their products or services. The communication stays at a celebratory level.
- The achievement belongs to all Indians, including companies. So, like individuals celebrate and congratulate the players/athletes, brands too do it.
- Amul has been doing it for many decades. If they can, and have not been pulled up by any player, athlete or celebratory management agency, other brands shouldn’t be either.
Some arguments that I keep hearing for saying that they cannot:
- There is a brand name and logo in every piece of communication that celebrates or congratulates an achievement. Companies and brands exist on the digital (or advertising/marketing) space to imprint their brand name and logo in people’s minds.
- Brands that have not invested in the players’/atheletes’ training/support (particularly for severely undervalued sports… meaning everything besides cricket) cannot just swoop in when there’s a new winner. That is grossly unethical and severely opportunisitic, even if they are just congratulating the winners.
- Most such congratulatory and celebratory posts on social media are shared for a specific reason – the hope that people share it widely. To make that happen, brands and agencies spend some time in trying to come up wtih a clever connection between the company’s product or service and the achievement. That makes the intent dual-purpose – celebrate the achievement, and while we do that, remember who brought this clever pun, funny creative!
I tend to side with the argument that brands should not leech on players and athletes in the name of celebrating or congratulating.
I believe that brands exist to sell their wares. Their entire communication apparatus exists for selling (or equipping audiences to remember the brands’ name, which in turn aids in selling).
More importantly, brands are not individuals, to have feelings and emotions like us, humans. Brands are a collective of individuals who have come together to sell a concept, product, or service to us. So, brands can only fake a personality, or an emotion, as decided by the marketing and communication teams. And this is not done without a specific purpose (because the entire set of people who are working to create and maintain the brand are paid a salary to do so). That purpose is to either sell or endear the brand, to audiences. And if that can also be done by celebrating sporting successes, then so be it – but the bottomline is to be able to sell, or help us recall. Congratulating sportspeople on their victory is merely a tool towards that goal.
This becomes all the more explicit when the clever, punny digital creatives they produce in the name of trend-jacking and celebration of achievement are also promoted using media budgets on digital platforms (promoted tweet, for instance).
If not promoted messages on social media, then it is the use of an actual photo of the player(s), or their likeness recreated to evade the photo-level usage. On a normal day when there is no achievement, if the same brand creates a message online that, for instance, ‘Sindhu is an excellent badminton player – company logo’, it seems completely odd and out of place. Just because there has been an achievement, it doesn’t change the equation.
Sporting events that are better represented professionally (mostly by BCCI, IPL, etc.) enforce their rights considerably better – this includes the event logo and name (both of which are offered for corporate sponsorship at huge amounts) and individual players’ rights. No agency or brand would dare to do anything directly alluding to any cricket player in any kind of tournament/event. That is because BCCI has a history of ensuring that its events and players are adequately represented and monetized.
The Indian Olympic Association should have proactively planned brand mentions of winners and sent a well-formulated note to leading agencies and publicized it adequately before the Olympics. We are now seeing the brand-led free-for-all in the name of trend-jacking because IOA was perhaps not proactive.
This moment-marketing is not restricted to the marketing world. The world of PR indulges in it too, and that looks even more bizarre and funny if you unwrap what goes inside it.
Consider this communication from IndiGo Airlines, aimed at India’s golden boy, Neeraj Chopra.
The brand has announced that they are offering free air travel to Neeraj for a period of one year. Ok, that sounds good and well-meaning, but how did they communicate this update? The message is from IndiGo. The message is intended for Neeraj Chopra. But the brand has sent a press release about and the COO is even quoted, “we sincerely hope you will avail of our offer“! Meaning: Neeraj will hear about IndiGo’s offer from the media?
Imagine if IndiGo pulls off a similar PR campaign aimed at Amitabh Bachchan – they could say, “Bachchan Sir, you are very inspirational to all of us. We are offering you free air travel for a period of 1 year. We hope you will avail of our offer” and send it as a press release without seeking consent from BigB. How does that look? It looks like the brand is riding on BigB’s name, something only brands that sign him up can do.
Even at a broad communication level, the ideal way to go about it is for IndiGo to reach out to Neeraj in private, check with him if he’d be interested in taking up the offer or if he has any other conditions or terms, and once sorted, then make the announcement to the world.
IndiGo is not alone in this. Several brands are using his name to make random announcements that he may not even know are on a platter until he reads about them in the news even as they are clearly meant for him!
That leaves us with the effort by Amul, which is often used as a beacon of correctness when it comes to topical advertising/moment-marketing, now called trend-jacking.
In the case of the Olympics, Amul is probably in the clear because the brand is the official sponsor of the Indian Olympic contingent for the 2021 games. But, barring many aberrations, Amul usually tries to not make it explicit in terms of names of individuals – the real creativity lies in merely alluding to something people are talking about (trending) and let the audiences make the connection in their heads.
For instance, here’s Amul’s topical ad for the release of Tiger Zinda Hai, and shared by the film’s director!
Like Flipkart’s kids-as-adults theme, there is a child version of Salman Khan, there are references to the film’s title and a song. Is Amul selling the film in this communication? Of course not – it is selling, and has always sold, Amul butter.
Consider the Amul topical ad for Aamir Khan’s Dangal – the same pattern.
Or, here is Amul’s topical ad on Karun Nair became the second Indian to score 300 in a test match.
When India won the Asia Cup in Hockey after 10 years, here’s what Amul did – the child-likeness of the players, a hockey stick, and an indirect reference to the game as a pun.
The attempt seems to be to consistently allude to the topical event or occasion and not make it so very obvious by taking the names. Of course, Amul has taken the names too, particularly when it comes to obituaries:
The larger point, though, is that Amul has been doing these topical ads for decades – since 1969, to be precise!
But does the amount of years Amul has been doing this trend-jacking make it ok? Hardly. Back when Amul started it, there weren’t any celebrity management firms, for all we know. Now, when we do have them, and when artists and players want to be properly represented to mine their celebrity-dom to make money from a fairly limited career window, they have every right to call out unofficial use of their names. And that applies to Amul too, though possibly owing to their status as ‘India’s loved brand’, celebrities and their management firms tend to skirt around calling out the brand.
Also, given the years behind Amul’s effort, they seem to have appropriated a space that almost makes their effort seem journalistic… as if they are news media, with the right to comment on topical events. But Amul is not news media – they pay the news media vehicle to have their topical ads displayed!
Here are 3 potential ways to manage trend-jacking:
1. For brands and agencies, a simple thumbrule before indulging in trend-jacking could be to explore the background before starting the work:
a. Are the people about to be mentioned by name represented professionally?
b. Are the event owners or their agency reachable to understand the guidelines around names and mentions?
But, most brands and their digital/social media agencies skimp on this check because all they want is to be the first brand with a clever pun and go ‘viral’. That haste could also land a brand in a legal tangle, so it is better to invest time and effort to do it right.
Yes, a low-hanging pun may be missed, but consider the possibility that a low-hanging pun would be pounced upon by every brand or agency. If an agency or brand team has a genuinely great pun, even if it is shared later, it would click.
2. Explore the potential of a category clash. For example, PV Sindhu is the official brand ambassador of Bank of Baroda. But a host of banking brands congratulated her for her success by naming her directly and this makes it seem like she may be endorsing those banks too, besides Bank of Baroda!
3. Focus on the occasion or event or achievement more than individuals. The occasion or reason for something trending could be separated from the person who is in the thick of the action.
For instance, here’s Amazon Prime India’s topical tweet on a specific trend that was buzzworthy at that time:
Observe the fact they do not mention the name of the person (actor Rahul Bose) involved at all. The creative lets people make the connection – that effort by the audience helps in engaging with them better. Of course, it may be tempting to explain everything, name everyone involved in order to ensure that everyone ‘gets’ the reference, but that’s where the risks start.
Or consider this one from Zomato. There is no mention of the person (Rahul Dravid), but easy to understand what and who it is about.
The difference between staying on topic and using individuals without their permission could be seen here – Haier vs. Bitbns. Haier alludes to the event without individual names or the Olympics logo (only a text-based mention), while Bitbns mentions 4 individual players and a team! The latter is a potential invite by the players themselves or their legal team/celebrity management team.
