Mumbai: Hyundai Motor Company has returned to the International Cricket Council (ICC) as a premier partner for two years after a decade-long hiatus. This time, the partnership is global, involving the company’s Seoul headquarters. What drove India’s second-largest passenger carmaker to international cricket once again, with a big-bang campaign starring actor Shahrukh Khan? Virat Khullar, head of marketing at Hyundai Motor India, talks to Mint about wooing ‘Gen-MZ’ and what’s changed about cricket in the last decade. Edited excerpts:
Q. Why did Hyundai sign this two-year deal as a premier sponsor?
We will be the premier partner for all ICC men’s cricket tournaments for two years. The idea is to connect with that ‘Gen-MZ’ [millennials and Gen Z] who have a love for cricket. They are aspirational and very loyal to certain brands. Also, ICC is among the world’s most prestigious global sporting bodies. The idea of our 360° campaign is to bring fans closer to the game they love and create memorable Hyundai fan moments. All our stakeholders are involved, including dealer-partners and employees. We are running a UGC [user generated content] campaign named the Sabse Bada Deewana [the biggest fan] contest and we will be a ‘co-powered’ sponsor on both connected TV (CTV) and linear TV with a JioStar partnership. More than 600 dealerships will have an ICC zone and a hero product.
Q. You’re coming back to the ICC after a decade. What’s changed about cricket in this time?
Two things. First, cricket has become more global. The short format has done very well for the ICC while T20 was a very young format ten years back. Second, cricket has also become more democratic and young. We are no longer dependent on 2-3 icons of the game. People are playing the game from much smaller towns, in far corners of the country, with both men and women winning accolades. We see 16-18-year-olds be a part of our national teams, which is the right representation of when we say India is a young country. We are one of the few countries where the median age is below 30 years.
Q. So has that changed the value Hyundai derives from associating with international cricket?
What cricket does for a high-involvement category like ours, is that it goes across the decision-making matrix. Cricket already goes to the father and mother who are the main decision makers, but also has a strong influence on the young teenager in the house who is now a big decision maker. The teenager decides not just the colour of the car to be bought [by the family], but also the brand of the car. So, cricket is the best fit for us from where our category also stands - being global, being short-form, and being young and democratic.
ICC gives us a strong foothold in the partnership. It also gives us an opportunity to advertise on connected TV; we didn’t have such targeted advertising ten years ago. Back then, the best way to reach high-end homes was perhaps, to target people with HDTVs. But today, there are 60 million households in India which have CTVs and are supposed ‘cord-cutters’, so a lot has evolved in the last ten years. [Cord-cutters are those TV viewers who ditch traditional cable or satellite TV to subscribe to OTT].
Q. Much of this ICC campaign revolves around the Indian consumer. But does men’s cricket also help Hyundai tap into a global audience?
You see the reach of the sport, and the percentage of the population in nearly every country that is now a fan of the sport. Cricket started as a commonwealth sport but now ICC wants to make it global. Hyundai is also a part of the National Hockey League in Canada, some football teams in Europe, FIFA globally, and now cricket also globally.
So, sports as an achievement and aspiration is a major point of consumption of content. Cricket consumption is getting wider and deeper. More and more countries are entering the sport like Italy most recently, and more people entering the sport in leagues in newer geographies like North America.
This is the right inflection point to enter the sport. It will become more and more global.
Think about this: this could have been an Indian partnership but it was a global deal.
Q. Lately, there have been concerns around the valuations of cricket broadcasting rights, and the value that big cricket leagues hold. As a marketer, what’s your view on the premium that cricket charges everyone in the ecosystem?
Not for the moment, these valuations are more speculative, measuring the value of the sport, and how a tournament might grow in the 2- 5 years. We are very happy with the ROI [return on investment] that the ICC is providing. We do very detailed valuations on any such partnerships, we benchmark. As a marketer, I should be very conscious of my ROI; it should be earned from my target audience and not just from a ‘spray and pray’ strategy.