Did the IPL6 Title Sponsorship pay off for Pepsi? What was the impact on Brand Buzz? A sneak preview from Digital Agency Experience Commerce.

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PEPSI IPL
BBI REPORT

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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)

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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’.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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”.

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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:

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.