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Apr 9, 2005

Women Cricket & Ads on TV

Hmmm did you see the pics, of the Women in Blues, anyone looks like Anna (Kournikova)?
No. If anyone had looked like Anna, would the sponsors have kept away? After all talent is not the first thing they look for.

But I think now, the girls will get more corporate support now, after all even if they dont win on Sunday, they did enter the finals of the World Cup for the first time.

Who do you think will jump onto the bandwagon or use women's cricket in their ads?
Well the fairness cream definitely. Now we will have ads not of just girls becoming commentators using fairness cream but of a girl hitting a six but not finding a guy and torn between net practise and her tanned face. And some well wisher will give her the Solution and hey presto within a week or 10 days, she will score a match winning shot, which will be a six and yeah a guy in the stadium will catch it and of course he will be handsome rich and eligible and ask the girl if she would marry him and she will have 2 trophies thanks to the fairness cream, one for the Person of the Match and the other Mr.Admirer of Ms.Fair Face.

We can of course have similar ads from toothpaste, talcum powder, lipsticks, hairoil, shampoo, soap, deo or anything which gives the women the self confidence she needs to face the bouncer and get a man.

And not forgetting the napkins. Imagination boggles when I think of the variations they can come up with , but then I notice a cringe from the reader,so wont elaborate :)

And dont forget the appliances. What a successful women cricketer uses at home. From the gas stoves, non stick pans, grinder, blender, fridge, washing machine ... And of course the detergent she uses for her whites,

The chocolates she eats, the credit card she uses to buy groceries, and the jewellery and anything and everything, which she uses or buys for her kids and spouse.

So its just not colas,cars,beverages,biscuits,bandaids,bike and TVs .. there is a vast market out there and atlast on TV, for better or for worse, women and cricket will not mean just Mandira Bedi in a noodle strap.

PS : Wonder how far we are from the day when a girl can write in her matrimonial profile,
Hobbies : Playing cricket. Instead of Singing, Reading, Knitting:)

35 comments:

  1. Why do ads use sportspersons? Because people are already familiar with their faces (through TV/Newspapers). So when their faces are used in an ad, people stop and give them at least a second.

    Now with the women's team.. how many people will recognize their face? Ads are not going to first explain that this girl is part of the winning team etc... and then proceed with the ad! So I am not sure these girls will get a lot of ad-time :-(.

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  2. well yeah sray, for the same reason ads use film stars.

    I am not sayin all the ads will feature the Women in Blues, just models playing cricket :D

    think the ad world would try to jump onto bandwagon and try to say we r so cool and modern, see we potray women playing cricket :) now buy that fairness cream :D

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  3. :), the example of the commentator ad, was nice..in fact, now that cream people can show a girl trying to get into the team , but she succeeds only when she starts using that cream, and becomes fair :D

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  4. :)) spark that would be outrageous, but wouldnt be suprised if an ad comes out the way u mention it.

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  5. i always hated that fairness cream adv.
    About advs for cricket team(gals) , adv world is different...they want ppl to promote the brand , if the brand wishes to promote the ppl , they will sponcer and have the logos every where and on ALL the clothes and accessories. i think nxt we see is Sania wearing ear-rings in the shape of some logo :) i can get into many details but must leave it to your imagination.

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  6. and Mandira Bedi will be the commentator and someone like Upen Patel or some other male model will probably accompany her as co-host? :-P

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  7. wgaf, that too will be tragic, but then nothing will suprise me :)

    when it comes to women cricket , the commentators can be men or women , ex players or pros like harsha bhogle, but mandira bedi and male models, plzzzzzzzzzzzzz

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  8. Was blog-hopping and stumbled on to your blog. Nice one u have here. I liked most of the books u have mentioned in ur list of Favourite oks

    And I hope the day comes soon..too.

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  9. Sangeetha thanks:)
    Visited ur blog, but having a prob in commentin,
    the window doesnt open.
    prbly prob at my end hope i figure it out:)

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  10. well its not fair to expect the corporate to feature women cricketers in ads when the sport is not popular

    at the same time its not fair to expect tv channels to devote time to this when its not popular.

    its a tough world, and according to me only performance should count first.

    so the women cricketers should perform, though its tough for them now, and then if the media doesnt give them attention perhaps they can complain.

    this post doesnt say ads should feature women crickets just that even if they become popular the ads wont change :d and the society wont change its views so easily :D

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  11. PT Usha didnt look that great... but she did get a lot of endorsements and ads!

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  12. a.mit, sray
    well appearance is not everything, but it sure counts, and it depends on the product brand etc too ,is what i think:)

    cuteapplecute, generally i ask bloggers to call me donkee :)

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  13. er, I disagree.
    Sania got endorsements after getting onto that 3rd round against Serena where she showed spunk but seemed too overawed by Serena's rep.

    and not to mention she won the hyd open (which was organised VERY shabbily)

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  14. wd..as long as ppl go in for the looks..it wud be manna frm hvn..fr mktg whizkids..i rmbr my granny (no more now) voted for Rajiv Gandhi...snce he was handsome looking..its seems to us as crazy..as long as the 'beauty' adages r taught to our kids..these tamasha wud go on..I for one feel sick..wd..i dunno, i mntd the othr day in my post too...sellng Breast Enhancers on teleshopping...atrocious..i feel we need to boycott products sold by women..(those tht use women to sell!)..ctch u ltr..

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  15. Hi, Wise Donkey, i enjoyed reading ur post. U have left no stones unturned. And the advt strategies u said of various fairnes creams is absolutely true.

    Some more wild imaginations, if Women's cricket gains fame:

    1. Women cricket team's captain is seen going around with a hot film star - shall we say Sharuk khan.

    2. Some women players were match fixed by bribing them with diamond jewellery.

    3. To make women's cricket more attractive, BCCI considering to change the sporting costumes as tight t shirt and shorts. ( Idea courtesy - Sania mirza)

    4. And our neighbour pakistan would also have a women's cricket team with their players wearing fully covered purdahs.

    5. Displaying logos in all prominent places in the sporting costumes, so that they get constant attention.

    6. Discussions in television and articles in magazines about " Women playing cricket - will it affect their pregnancy"

    7. And the dumb mandira bedi, with her rich experience in cricket commenting (???????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!) will become indian cricket coach.

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  16. aiyooooooooooooo
    maverick :D

    well the team didnt win, but hope no one connected with the team is reading this, and gets ideas

    and u saved the worst for last
    mandira and coach nooooooooooooooooo

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  17. "gaya"

    hehe good post i say :) .....

    What i have noticed is that whenever u r on the top pple flock around u and so u shud make the most of the situation since u never know ... KAL HO NA HOOO

    Make Hay while the sun shines :)

    Gross commercialisation is though bad ..... Improves the marketability of the game and Most of we Indians are smart enough to know credibility of any product :)... SO it shudnt matter much to us ...

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  18. amita, i agree:)
    though i hate the fairness cream ads.

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  19. Ha ha ha Gaya :)

    First of all, let the gals win and make us proud :) Like you said in your previous post, maybe then there'll be more encouragement for women in cricket :)

    As for ads, oh no, I guess the women team winning means increase in the no. of ads. I'm not sure I really want that!!! :(

    Advantages and disadvantages I guess ;-)

    Deeps.

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  20. :D deeps

    well they lost yday, but think there will be atleast a subtle change in couple of ads:)

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  21. i wonder whether Australian Women cricket players get advertisements !!!they hve won the WOrld Cup 5 times !

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  22. gaya, tell me one thing .
    how much time do u spend everyday blogging?of course ,this includes the time spent pondering over the next post.
    i asked this coz each of ur post is so
    original....

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  23. a.mit interesting thought:) but i dont know if the sportsperson there earn a lot on ads. i read somewhere that Indian cricketers (men) earn more than their Aussie counterpart.

    Kalpesh thanks:)
    I just read the around 7-10 websites daily and check some blogs regularly, earlier used to be addicted to bbc too, though now due to blogs not that much.
    So I guess around 4-6 hours on the average :) Thinking on posts, depends on the posts I guess :) i am not much of a social person so spend my time thinking/day dreaming whatever. Now it has an outlet in blogs:)

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  24. Can you believe I came to know about Women cricket world cup only when Indian team played with kiwis. I don't understand why print media (I don't know abouts tv news medis) don't give a good coverage to Women's Cricket. I have a doubt women cricket's will get sponser or will apear in any advertisement untill Indian public show their craziness towards them. Once Indian public becomes crazy they will get print media coverage and later the sponsor. Actually that's true in every country when we talk about Team game. Even in USA men's team games are more popular than women's.

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  25. There is so much which has been written about media here and blaming and cursing them. But can we really ponder on the main reason "Y"....Why do we blame media?
    Media sells what everybody is willing to buy and not the other way round. So its not media who is the culprit... We as an public are culprit... Media shows us what we want to see... Corporates finances those things which they think would be profitable for the company in the long run... What makes them profitable is all and all the general public... We are all to blame ourselves for fiasco like this...
    This is really disgusting that our national team is in Cricket(Passion, religion and what not for India) world cup final and hardly anybody is aware of the fact. Their financial state is also not very sound. Leave alone the comparison with Men's team.
    Even if they would have won the game, I dont really think something big would have happened for the country(Though if Indian mens cricket team would have won the world cup, it would have been like one more independence). Its because we as individuals dont give much credence to this.

    I just wrote something and then deleted it. Thot may not go very well with the bloggers Wisey. But it was plain truth. General public does something in which they get some entertainment :-)

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  26. amit i have said what u said in my 1.46 pm comment earlier :)

    triplex tarun :)

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  27. tarun i dont have access to the print media. since they cover more i would have expected them to cover. suprised they didnt.

    Indiatimes sify didnt cover much , Rediff covered better I think:)

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  28. amit,

    the media writing about what the people want is oh-so-wrong.

    latest eg: Do you think people would really love to watch a week straight with the front page filled with the Pope, and his funeral and who's attending there, when an Indo-Pak ODI series is on?

    OR (going a lil while back)
    do you think that IC814 got solved better because NDTV and Zee out-did each other by relentlessly showing what the govt. did when Mufti Mohd. Sayeed's(current J&K PM) daughter was abducted?

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  29. Nice thought. I think the handsome guy who will catch the ball might be a user of Fair and Handsome cream.:)

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  30. im 16 i've played cricket since i was 7 and i kno that a lot of ppl hold negative perceptions about women cricketers.
    obviously there is very little publicity and wen they do receive publicity they're portrayed as being 'manly'..'second best' etc
    is this the way that ppl do perceive them??...because i think that these perceptions are the main problem rather then the actual talent of womens cricketers who are quite possibly under rated...

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