Maruti to spend more on upcoming cricket tournaments than IPL

With the current and next fiscal quarter being a witness to some of the high-impact sports properties such as the World Cup, Asia Cup, Bilateral Cricket matches and the Asian Games, automobile major, Maruti Suzuki is going to spend comparatively higher in H2 as compared to H1 which consist of the IPL.

As per Shashank Srivastava, Senior Executive Director- Marketing and Sales, Maruti Suzuki, India is set to host numerous major sporting events this time, including the Asia Cup and World Cup for cricket, as well as the Asian Games for multi-sports. The schedule is packed from September to November, with these three significant events, followed by bilateral cricket series involving India and Australia, along with India and South Africa, from December to February.

“Historically, ad buys for sporting events are sold at a premium to normal ad rates of GEC programming. These premiums run as high as 50% to 100% in some cases. Hence, we are keeping higher budgets aligned for presence on these major sporting events in the second half of the year,” he added.

“Our ad budgets for the upcoming quarters are higher as compared to Q1FY24, firstly due to the cyclical nature of the automobile category, wherein more business comes from H2 as compared to H1 and the same reflects in the 60:40 bifurcation of ad budget allocations throughout the year,” he said.

In an earlier interaction with BestMediaInfo.com, he had stated that MSIL allocated around Rs 40 crore, approximately 3-5% of the brand’s expected media spending, during the IPL, which it had entered mid-season.

The brand allocated a significant 81% of funds towards television and 19% towards the digital OTT (CTV) platform during IPL 2023.

Furthermore, he also opined that since overall consumer buying sentiments remain elevated and consumer’s propensity to purchase products linked to major festivals goes up during the festive period (Q2 and Q3), categories such as Auto, Consumer durables, Home, Decor, Real estate, retail etc. have to fight it out for their share of spends from consumer's purse.

This often leads to less ad inventory being available and ad rates being elevated during the festive season which makes the advertising market all cluttered and leads to 10-15% higher ad spends in Q2 and Q3 as compared to Q1, he elaborated.

“Our ad spends in festive (JAS & OND) qtrs are roughly 55-60% of annual ad spends,” he stated.

The brand’s media planning has now moved from traditional to a fully integrated one, and therefore Maruti Suzuki’s base planning for upper funnel metrics is driven by longer format videos on TV+OTT and Cinemas (in some cases) which is in parallel complemented by short format videos, display, stories, reels and other innovations through digital platforms to drive lower funnel metrics, Srivastava shared.

“Allocation for brand campaigns, typically is 40-50% TV, around 25-35% to Digital + OTT and another 20-25% to innovations on Print, Cinema and OOH. Radio is used only in tactical campaigns,” he said.

He then went on to add that accompanying the automobile major’s ad campaigns is its presence on High Impact Properties and On-Ground Associations, which typically have appointment-driven viewership and therefore garner huge eyeballs in specific genres like GEC, Sports, Lifestyle, fashion, News etc.

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