LIVE SPORTS DURING FESTIVE SEASON IS A GREAT CONTENT MARKETING OPPORTUNITY FOR ADVERTISERS

In the recent past, sports advertising has evolved drastically. Now more than ever, brands are eagerly turning to sports marketing for innovative ways to garner deeper engagement with their audiences.

The upcoming festive season coincides with 53 days of non-stop cricketing action with Marquee tournaments such as Australia and South Africa tour of India, followed by the highly anticipated T20 World Cup with 47 matches from 16th Oct to 13th Nov 2022, offering brands a ready platform to reach highly engaged, affluent, premium audiences on Disney+ Hotstar.

Branded content helps brands build a deeper connect with their customers. More so when it comes to live cricket, a brand can connect with its audiences by creating content capsules, which are contextual to the game by leveraging influencers such as the players and commentators.

Another trend is for brands to go beyond vanilla ads and build deeper connections with sport-loving audiences with contextual branded content, leading to higher association and engagement on key brand metrics. Branded content generally yields far better results for message association, recall, purchase intent and other metrics compared to a vanilla-video ad campaign.

Live sports offer several content creation options, including Branded PPL Segments, Influencer-led Content and Bespoke Long-Form Content.

Branded PPL Segments offer brands an exclusive segment during the LIVE Stream. Distributed during the pre-toss and post-toss, these segments deliver an all-around presence throughout the tournament and drive better communication via the power of contextual messaging and high content affinity. Viewers love watching anchors like Jatin Sapru, Anant Tyagi, Suren Sundaram and Mayanti Langer who are popular faces on Disney+ Hotstar and look up to them for an analysis of the upcoming matches. So, tapping into their popularity and credibility allows brands to leverage them as influencers during the tournaments.

Influencer-led content focuses on harnessing cricket influencers along with the power of targeting cricket to drive heightened relevance for the campaign. Disney+ Hotstar is considered the home of cricket with access to the largest talent base in Sports, effectively leveraging its rich roster of influencers including current and ex-cricketers, anchors, experts, and commentators to deliver powerful messaging for clients. A popular format is 15-60 second cuts shared during Mid-Rolls, Drinks-Break, and on Influencer Social Media handles.

An example of influencer-led content was the popular Love, Bru & Wifey with Sakshi Dhoni. The show took a leaf from Bru’s creative communication in the TN market over some crazy cricket superstitions that Sakshi and her fans carry when it comes to their love for cricket.

Bespoke content covers the gamut of customized long-form and series-based content for brands targeting the cricket viewer. On Disney+ Hotstar, bespoke content drives consideration and intent for a brand’s products with bespoke content solutions that work hard to highlight the product benefits, address myths, and showcase a deeper brand story. Like influencer-led content, bespoke content ranges between 15-60 seconds and gets played during Mid-Rolls, Drinks-Break, and on Influencer Social Media handles.

The League of Platinum Men Season 1 on Disney+ Hotstar had cricketer KL Rahul offer a glimpse into some inspiring cricketing journeys and iconic stories of legendary cricket players and unforgettable icons.

An example of long-form bespoke content is the six-part miniseries, hosted by Archana Vijayan that featured candid conversations with KL Rahul. The series included seven episodes of 10+ mins each and was hosted on an exclusive show page. The content got promoted during the LIVE match and pushed through long-form midroll ad formats.