In at present’s ever-evolving promoting and advertising and marketing area, manufacturers undertake a contemporary, extra genuine method, particularly concerning their participation in ladies’s sports activities. The standard delicate portrayal of girls is not prevalent. The brand new narrative focusses on their fierce competitiveness, power, and uncooked willpower. I’ve witnessed this shift firsthand as somebody on this enterprise for over twenty years. The evolution of how manufacturers have interaction with ladies’s sports activities in India is nothing in need of revolutionary, each for companies and the viewers at giant.
The transformation isn’t just a advertising and marketing technique; it is a cultural shift altering how we understand ladies in sports activities and society. For many years, conventional sports activities promoting has predominantly highlighted males in sports activities, reflecting the business’s perceived male dominance; nonetheless, because the highlight more and more shifts in the direction of ladies in sports activities, manufacturers are responding considerably. We’re seeing a radical shift, as numerous manufacturers from completely different industries are all leaping to be a part of this new wave of motion that is change into such a large a part of the sporting ecosystem.
As we speak’s model campaigns have a good time ladies’s power, grit, and endurance. Manufacturers are telling the tales of fierce feminine athletes who, like their male counterparts, compete with coronary heart, even within the face of ache and private challenges. Latest cricket leagues have completely encapsulated this up to now few years. With the TATA WPL and ICC Girls’s T20 World Cup gaining extra traction, manufacturers have taken a brand new method to sports activities sponsorships. Manufacturers are capitalising on the high-octane motion from these athletes, whether or not it is by jerseys, title sponsorships, and even perimeter board branding.
Even leagues at present aren’t merely acknowledging that ladies’s sports activities are on the rise; they’re boldly declaring that the ladies are right here, they usually’re right here to dominate. Campaigns just like the WPL’s ‘Cricket Ka Queendom’ and the ICC Girls’s T20 World Cup’s ‘No matter It Takes’ spotlight the fierce willpower and relentless power these athletes deliver to the sphere. These campaigns have a good time the grit, ability, and ambition that propel ladies athletes to the head of their sport, remodeling the narrative from potential to energy and from rising to excelling.
This is a enjoyable reality: ladies are usually not simply athletes. They’re additionally an important shopper base for sports activities, and types are lastly waking as much as this actuality. The rise in viewership for the leagues everyone knows and love has proven that the proportion of individuals watching sports activities these days isn’t as male-dominated as we might imagine. The ICC Girls’s T20 World Cup turned the world’s most-watched ladies’s cricket occasion final yr with a staggering 5.4 billion viewing minutes; the Girls’s Premier League (WPL) recorded 50 million viewers in its inaugural season alone. It is not simply cricket both; the UEFA Girls’s Euro 2022 ultimate broke information by attracting over 365 million viewers throughout varied platforms, whereas the FIFA Girls’s World Cup 2019 garnered greater than 1.12 billion viewers worldwide, marking a 30% enhance from the 2015 version. As well as, attendance is rising, which is constructive information for manufacturers that help ladies’s sports activities and athletes.
Talking of athletes, let’s bear in mind how influential they’ve change into as model ambassadors as of late. Girls like PV Sindhu, Harmanpreet Kaur, Jemimah Rodrigues, and Mary Kom are usually not simply sporting icons anymore; they’re reshaping perceptions of girls in sports activities. Manufacturers lastly recognise this energy and collaborate with these athletes to inform inspiring tales—storylines of victories, struggles, and perseverance. These genuine narratives create a deeper reference to the viewers, particularly the younger women who see these athletes as function fashions.
Take Puma’s ‘Cricket is Everybody’s Sport’ marketing campaign, for instance. It appeals on to feminine sports activities followers and reinforces the concept cricket belongs to everybody, not simply males.
Girls’s sports activities sponsorships, from cricket to wrestling, are additionally rising, creating contemporary alternatives for model visibility. Many Indian manufacturers historically related to male sports activities are investing increasingly in ladies’s leagues, particular person athletes, and occasions.
We’re not simply speaking about cricket anymore; we’re seeing Indian ladies athletes excel in varied fields. This evolution creates a ripple impact, influencing how worldwide manufacturers understand and interact with ladies’s sports activities in India.
Entrepreneurs have the privilege of taking part on this transformative advertising and marketing shift for the upcoming era. By shifting the narrative from female to portraying ladies athletes as sturdy and fierce, they empower younger women to see themselves as future athletes and world champions, paving the way in which for a brand new period of illustration and empowerment.
As we speak’s world celebrates ladies in sports activities for his or her power, resilience, and authenticity. Manufacturers are embracing this modification, and the impression is profound. This is not only a pattern; it is a revolution. And as we proceed to champion ladies in sports activities, we’re redefining advertising and marketing and provoking the brand new era of athletes.
(Our visitor creator, Vidur Naik is the Managing Accomplice at TCM Platform, a widely known sports activities administration firm, constructing sporting communities throughout offline, on-line and within the metaverse. He has labored throughout varied leagues and girls in sports activities is a subject near his coronary heart.)
Written with the View : afaqs