How Unilever Became the next sponsor for Bangladesh Cricket Team

One of our youngest memories of Shakib Al Hassan was without doubt, his many appearances in Lifebuoy commercials with the immortal catchphrase – “Protidin Paach Belay LIFEBUOY”. It’s no surprise that Unilever Bangladesh had seen a market worth tapping into, and they tapped into the biggest tree of them all – the Bangladesh Cricket Team.

The Prestige brings you a case study into what this means for Unilever Bangladesh:

Context:

When Amby Valley prematurely cut their contract in 2015, Robi Axiata assumed their role as the sponsor of the tigers. Despite a renewed contract in 2017 that was meant to last till 2019, the telecommunication giant had prematurely backed out of this sponsorship citing conflict of interest over players and their individual sponsorships from separate telecommunication companies that preceded the Robi sponsorship deal.

Despite initial disagreement from BCB CEO, Nizamuddin Chowdhury, the board decided that it was time they parted ways with the multinational telecommunication giant while pledging to be more aware in order to prevent future conflict of interest.

How Did Unilever Attain The Rights To The Tigers:

With the fallout with Robi Axiata, BCB required a new sponsor for the time period from 9th September 2018 to 31st January, 2020. Thus, they invited Expression of Interests along with financial offers from reputed entities and corporate bodies for the exclusive Rights to the Tigers.

This sponsorship meant having rights to The National Men’s and Women’s teams, ‘A’ Team and The Under-19 Men’s Team. After an intense bidding war, the information of which has not been publicly disclosed, popular consumer goods company – Unilever Bangladesh stood victorious.

While we cannot accurately state the competitive nature of this bidding war, in 2015 after the departure of Amby Valley, BCB had received 6 technical proposals with a base bid of BDT 300 Million. While this in itself is a massive feat, 2018 saw players with much higher net worth, the rise of the women’s & men’s U19 teams and many more branding opportunities than before with the escalated global image of Bangladesh Cricket. Hence, we can safely assume that the bid for 2018 was the most competitive so far.

How Unilever Benefits From This:

Many would argue that being a sponsor to Bangladesh Cricket is like being a sponsor to Bangladesh. It’s a cherished game and sponsoring it is an expensive task for a reason.

I) Foreign Game Exposure: Bangladesh Cricket is estimated to have approximately 200 games during the period of the sponsorship, translating to high value foreign exposure for Unilever and Lifebuoy.

The Bangladesh Men’s Team is scheduled to have over 55 games while Women’s Team are meant to have 50 or more. On the other hand, The A team is to play 24 games excluding T20 matches and the U19 Men’s Team are to meet foreign adversary in 50 matches approximately.

II) Banking On Nationalistic Values: Robi made the most of their BCB Sponsorship with popular campaigns such as #JoleUthoBangladesh – the beauty behind these campaigns are how they are immortal because of their affiliation to Bangladeshi cricket. Sponsoring Bangladeshi Cricket means regular Bangladeshis will no longer see Unilever as just another Multinational company but as an enabler of Bangladesh. This promotes consumer engagement, as it has with Robi in the past.

III) Access To A Separate Target Group: Unilever already woos people enthusiastic about personal hygiene but this sponsorship means a unique opportunity to tap into a market of people that they haven’t been able to engage with in the past.

IV) General Brand Value: With a solid addition to their portfolio, Unilever Bangladesh is seemingly more competent than ever. When MRF sponsored the bats of cricketers such as Sachin Tendulkar, Gautam Gambhir, Rohit Sharma, Brian Lara and a lot of others, people thought that MRF was a bat company, not a corporate entity. The same rationale may possibly apply here for Unilever and their brand being seen as an integral part of cricket, sports and on a larger scheme – Bangladesh.

The Bigger Picture:

Upon further research, the Prestige has identified that Unilever has a culture of facilitating passion sponsorships for sports globally as a mastermind scheme towards engaging more consumers and clients. As of right now, Unilever has their wallets in Premier League Giants Chelsea FC and Manchester United. MLS Giants – LA Galaxy and FC Dallas, as well as entire corporate entities behind the football scene such as La Liga, City Football Group and Soccer United Marketing.

Besides football and cricket, Unilever is well vested into Basketball having sponsored the Turkish National Basketball team and FIBA EuroBasket 2017 along with other sponsorships into athletics, NASCAR events and hockey.

The Sponsorship towards Bangladesh Cricket Board is groundbreaking from Unilever’s perspective, not many corporations have the honor of representing a nation of 165 million people, and it’s definitely going to be interesting to see how Unilever brands themselves now with the help of Bangladesh Cricket.