IPL makes for a great association with a brand: Muthoot Fincorp Marketing Head

Sreechaitanya Garimella, Head of Marketing, Muthoot Fincorp, says IPL not only offers a high level of audience engagement but also allows their brand to tick off multiple marketing goals

by Team PITCH
Published - May 18, 2022
3 minutes To Read
IPL makes for a great association with a brand: Muthoot Fincorp Marketing Head

"IPL, which is neither elitist nor meant only for the affluent, makes for a great association with our brand. Cricket, and specifically IPL, cuts across barriers like age, geographies, languages and backgrounds,” says Sreechaitanya Garimella, Head of Marketing, Muthoot Fincorp Ltd.

Muthoot FinCorp has continued as the title sponsor of Royal Challengers Bangalore for the third consecutive year for this sporting tournament that commands a viewership of over 550 million people.

According to Garimella, having this level of audience engagement over two months with a single event allows the brand to tick off multiple marketing goals from building brand awareness to reach and recall, largely through TVCs for the widest possible reach, as well as messaging with the use of multiple media channels.

“The first leg of the campaign has been about brand differentiation and highlighting that we are the Blue Muthoot, as part of our BlueSoch campaign and Vidya Balan as a brand ambassador, it went on air during the beginning of IPL. After running that for the first two weeks of the tournament and establishing that brand differentiation, we began the second leg of the campaign which revolves around our core proposition of gold loans,” he said.

Also as part of the sponsorship, the Muthoot Fincorp logo has been prominently appearing during Royal Challengers Bangalore’s matches and it is also placed on the team’s training jerseys. As a part of this collaboration, we got connected with millions of fans across the country through social media integrations as well as TV commercials featuring RCB players, including cricketing superstar Virat Kohli.

Kohli appears in three avatars in three TVCs along with other RCB players, which is a part of the ‘Mera Gold Loan, Mera Interest’ campaign. The core message of the campaign appealed to the customers as they can exercise their freedom while choosing their interest rate.

“Virat has a huge following, not only in India, but across the world, and also has fans among supporters of other teams. Everyone wants to watch him play, and he has similar popularity in the ad world as well,” Garimella points out.


According to GroupM ESP, which released its Sporting Nation in The Making annual report last month, “India has doubled its media spending in sports across platforms and total endorsement activity in the market. According to the last year’s data, the sports endorsement industry grew by 11% year-on-year in 2021 with a score of INR 625 cr. Total media spending surpassed a whopping amount of INR 6018 cr, contributing to 65% of the growth revenue in 2020-21.”

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