Most advertised brand in the ICC World Cup is not the most recalled

It's widely believed that ads with the highest recall, are the ones that bust the bank with their marketing spends (media weight). But in the case of the ICC World Cup 2019, this long held belief does not pass muster.

An analysis by Campaign India using data from broadcast audience research firm BARC India and insights from a recent survey by the Indian Institute of Human Brands (IIHB) suggests that there is little co-relation between brands that continue to spend heavily on cricket and the ones that are score high on spontaneous or top-of-mind recall.

According to BARC India, Kamla Pasand Pan Masala has taken the highest number of spots in the Cricket World Cup so far (data available till 28 Jun), but its recall in the IIHB study is at a low of 39 percent.

In contrast, personal care brand Fogg, that topped the scores on spontaneous recall in the IIHB study is only the third or fourth largest consumer of ad spots (if you combine Byju's spends) as per the BARC data.

However, in cases like Byju's, which got the highest Celebar score of 78 in the IIHB study for its association with Shah Rukh Khan, the media weights of Byju's Learning App combined with the Disney Early Learn App, during this world cup catapults it to the second largest advertised brand on the list of Top 20 advertisers.

But other high spenders like Puro Healthy Salt (the fifth largest consumer of spots, according to BARC) gets no mention in the recall study by IIHB. PhonePe, that's the fourth largest brand in terms of ad spot consumption, gets recalled for the Aamir Khan ads (the ads featuring the actor aren't running during the world cup). 

Brands like Uber and Dream11 with Indian cricket captain Virat Kohli and former Indian skipper MS Dhoni respectively spend half the money of the top spender. But Uber gets a spont recall score of 65 perc ent while Dream11 gets a score of 48 per cent.    

So, does media weight guarantee top recall? The argument cuts both ways.