The brand ‘Dravid’ story

New Delhi: Rahul Dravid bounced back to endorsing brands sometime back with CRED, an online platform for making credit card payments and earning lucrative awards. He was chosen for an uncharacteristic role totally opposite to what he stands as a brand personality. 

Those campaigns were successful and did raise the awareness levels for the brand and the campaign ran for some time. BPCL and latest being Bournvita have roped him to endorse their brands. 

I thought the choice of Dravid for Bournvita is a perfect match as the brand always connected well with sports and games. Also in Sri Lanka, Milo the competitor to Bournvita, has owned the cricketing property there and have helped the Sri Lanka Cricket board in unearthing fresh talents from school levels through several tournaments. 

Brand Dravid:

As a cricketer Dravid stood for trust and reliability with some facets of leadership which helped him earn to be the coach of India for nearly three years. 

He hasn’t endorsed numerous brands but there were some brands who were very selective to rope him. While there was several ups and downs in Indian cricket, but brand endorsements were always in the radar for some of the old reliable cricketers like Sachin, Ganguly and Dravid who have been the icons of Indian cricket having played all the format for over nearly two decades. 

Dravid's brand equity: 

His brand equity is high and he was noticed highly during the cricket season in the 2023 world cup, IPL and the T-20 world cup.  

BPCL leveraged him the maximum for their lubricants and I think they continue to have him since his equity will continue for some time as his brand personality and characteristics are very unique and longer lasting. 

He is a trusted brand advisor with lot of credibility. And just recently, Bournvita has roped him to promote their brand for the D for Dreams campaign to push the importance of vitamin D amongst kids and to learn the finer art of batting skill from the master. D for Dravid and Vitamin D goes well. 

What connects brands with Dravid? 

It takes time to be a reliable and trusted brand ambassador. Dravid has not overnight become an icon in cricket he has spent close to two decades to build his persona of being the Mr. Reliable of Indian cricket having scored over 10000 runs in test crickets which very few batsmen world over has achieved. 

His career graph as cricketeer has been impressive except for a dismal performance in the 2007 world cup in West Indies. 

His cool temperament and gentleman behaviour earned him to be India’s captain and finally the national coach where is victory and statistics are quite impressive. 

To sum up his brand characteristics stood for being a trusted, reliable, intelligent, energetic, performance driven, sincere and honest personality.

Why do brands still prefer Dravid? 

When it comes to cricket, brands prefer go for a known and familiar face. 

More than familiar they look for a clean image, trust and should help in the long term for the brand. This is where brands like BPCL opted for him where he played the role of an expert and he was the voice of authority when he was recommending the engine oil to the desired target audience. 

His stature as Mr. Dependable and the coach of India has further substantiated his stature. His new role in the Bournvita promotion where he is positioned as trainer connects well with the brand in a category where recognised sportsmen matter a lot. 

Brands that can look at Dravid for endorsements:

Dravid is a very professional model who belonged to the copy book cricket where his fundamentals as a cricketer was always been rock solid. He is a perfectionist and therefore called has Mr. Dependable. All these characters can associate him with category like Cements, Steel, Paints, Glass where durability is a key factor. 

Looking at his current position and the world cup victory, some of the existing brands will extend his contract as he may become a coach of a new franchisee in 2025 IPL season. 

Being a good teacher and coach, he could also fit well for some educational brand who is into learning and dissemination of knowledge. 

There are very few select cricketers from the 80’s and 90’s who still endorse brands but all them only endorse a few brands. 

But Dravid with his consistent performance as a cricketer and now a coach has further strengthened and increase his value and equity for brands to consider him. 

The next one or two years, his equity will remain stable and he will continue to be a perfect brand fit for some of the category which will resonate with his overall brand personality.