ICL to use Online Marketing to compete with IPL

The rebel Indian Cricket League (ICL) is coming back for a second season with a bigger marketing spend of 40-50 crores and with an greater emphasis on internet marketing to steal back the limelight from the bigger and far more successful IPL this time around ICL hopes to focus on cricket and its cricketers. That’s what the new tagline conveys- ‘Cricket Hai Meri Life’. There are three distinct elements in the ICL marketing strategy

1. First part is the brand campaign wherein they will showcase talented domestic cricketers depending on their regions with a combination of Television spending on Zee TV ' s network of channels as well as in the print with the aim to showcase the grit and determination of the domestic players, where they come from and where they have reached.
   
2. The second element of the strategy is to generate tuneins to opening day and for this they seem to be banking on a radio campaign to complement the brand ones.
   
3. The third element of the strategy is to engage with their users which they hope to achieve through internet Afaqs reports more on this

   ICL will make its presence felt extensively online. Apart from creating portals, the group plans to associate with a few gaming portals.ICL is in the final stages of negotiation with eBay, the popular e-commerce website, for a tie-up, through which ICL will auction off experiences. Cricket lovers will be able to bid for a particular experience; for instance – the highest bidder gets the opportunity to flip the coin during the toss prior to the match or accompanying ace commentators in the commentator’s box during the match. The money, from the bids, Patel says, will go to charity. “The idea behind this is to get the fans closer to the action”, he states. Autographed merchandise will also be auctioned. This will be promoted online and on radio.

But will all thse strategies will work thats a difficult thing to predict but I can say is that cricket requires larger than life stars which ICL lacks especially in Indian context but still twenty twenty cricket by itself is a huge draw in India which might enable them to draw decent audiences however I hope they will make better use of regional marketing than last year.
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