MRF ‘blimp’, redux
Show of hands, please — how many of you who were at yesterday’s game actually saw that bloated balloon up in the sky?
It wasn’t there, by all accounts I’ve been getting. And it is not the first time — readers had written in after a couple of the Ahmedabad games, to report that they were at the stadium, and had seen no sight of the blimp.
Apparently MRF is at the forefront of technology after all — it is now sponsoring, with considerable help from the commentators, its own version of alternate reality.
Oh, and have you been keeping an eye on those ads, mostly in between deliveries, that are structured to look like they are being flashed on the giant scoreboard? You know they aren’t actually on the scoreboard, that it just the broadcasters first zooming onto the board, then patching in the ad, right?
Right. Just saying.
Update: On Twitter, I was informed just now by ‘Flyfiddlesticks’ that the blimp is usually off the stadium, and that therefore folks at the ground won’t get to see it.
So let me see if I understand this — somewhere, you have a giant balloon floating, and you train your TV cameras on that from time to time, and for the TV audience the impression is that it is floating over the stadium?
And the point of that is?
I have a strong urge to laugh at this non-sense these guys are pulling. On the other hand, I also seem to have a strong urge to spit on them.
o yea even i spent a better part of the evening looking for that damned blimp during the rcb-chennai match. So long MRF, you have managed to screw up the last 20 years goodwill in the short span of 1 month [last statement can be partially attributed to the now infamous @eyepeeyell ].
modi is ‘infamous’. eyepeeyell is ‘famous’. :p
Robin Jackman in one of the matches when the cameras panned to the “blim” “MRF has been at the forefront of Technology and they are the first to bring a balloooobaboon blimp to India”
So there you have it folks MRF is the first to bring a baboon to India no need to go to the zoo watch IPL and you have baboons, chimps (Sreesanth?) and other wild animals.
This is very close to a con job if a non-existent thing is shown. There was an incident many years ago when the BBC showed a documentary (or was it a news item, not so sure now) on the conflict in Jammu and Kashmir and interspersed it with random visuals of tankers and fighter jets in Bosnia. That became a big issue and the channel was forced to issue a clarification and apology. This may be an extreme comparison though.
Precisely. It *is* a con job. Trouble is no one is calling IPL out on it
Just noted the update in the post. This is hilarious now
There is a *blimp* somewhere which is shown periodically and every time it is shown on camera the commentators go “Hey look! the blimp….”
This reminds me of hollywod movie ‘ Wag the Dog’ when a TV producer starts a fictional war in some corner of eastern europe and shoots dummy footage and shows it on TV News so as to help the ‘President’ win re-election bid.
Oh f***! well done Mr.Modi.. It is damn ugly to find this out tho
I was thinking that MRF did a good job getting that blimp .. er balloon to all the different grounds. Now I find out, you dont need to go to the expense of actually floating the balloon and maintaining it against all the elements and protecting it from people who want to pop it, when you can get all the advertising without having a physical balloon.
Great move MRF.
I did see the “blimp” parked near the Chinnasamy Stadium at Bangalore.
The ads between deliveries were very easy to identify as a con job. The people movement in the background would be the same for all the ads-between-deliveries in a given match. But with the “blimp” also apparently being a con job, and the way the results of the last weeks matches have been – hope the matches atleast are for real.
So, now you know where that money of yours goes when you buy an MRF tyre. If you don’t want to pay an “IPL-premium” when you buy a tyre, you better buy a non-MRF brand. After all, they have to recoup all the money that they paid for those blah-blah-blah on blimp and blink.
So are you going to buy goods only from companies that spend $0 on advertising?
Where did I say that Sir? My points: 1) Advertising is a fact of life, 2) Advertising cost obviously ends up in the retail price that we customers pay, 3) As a result, if a company isn’t sensible enough about how and where it spends its advertising money, it hurts the interests of its customers. I don’t want to get into a detailed discussion on how many marginal customers MRF has acquired or is acquiring because of the “blimp”. Aid that, I am very very skeptical of companies/products that give full-page, wall-to-wall adverts (exhibit 1: IIPM).
Isnt MRF sensible enough by not having a real balloon in all venues?
))
I actually spotted Mantri Altius which is actually in bangalore during yesterdays match, its actually sorry to see commentators go through the pains of building up a story for ” the blimp” – here’s the tag cloud – ” forefront of technology”, ” First to bring the blimp to india”,” random garbage about MRF pace foundation and Dennis lillie” and ” Rohit sharma and gautam gambhir as ambassadors of the foundation”…
This same tape goes on and on, seriouly in this age of constant innovation, MRF spent a lot of money on static garbage being aired again and again. .
Thanks for bursting the myth or blimp or baloon or wateva.
I thought advertising was a polite word for a con job.
Ram
When has MRF been any good at advertising? Their ads have been consistently bad over the years. This new “ad” with the “blimp” is just another step down. So, am not disappointed with MRF.
But the commentators make me sad. I just wish one of them (maybe Harsha Bhogle on Twitter) spills the truth – officially.
Of course, the ads on the stadium boards were complete fakes. The clarity itself was a huge giveaway from day one.
The reason for the ads between deliveries shown in this way is that the revenue goes to ipl and not set max which earns through ads between overs.
I have been wondering about this since long.
Some ads are (or at-least in the initial days) really shown on the big screens. You can make out from the quality – may be a way for IPL to eat more pie of the advt money, or costs less to the advertiser.
The others that are made to look like being shown on screens but are really broadcast by Sony are beyond common sense. Sony will get the money anyway unless IPL contract has clause that gives Sony some discount for such kind of ad format?
One fine day, I wish somebody fires a missile at that blimp,and says “Got the elevation, got the distance, the result is a DLF collateral damage”
Cheers!
Vasu
you made my day
Most of the advertisers spend the money taking into consideration only the huge TV audience and not the in stadia spectators. So does it matter if TV uses a stock footage? MRF could have given lot of trivia about their company to the commentators instead of asking them to parrot “MRF runs a cricket academy for 20 years and Dennis Lille is the Director”. The ad agency of MRF needs to be sacked. This blimp should be a classic case study for marketing students as to ‘how not to advertise’
LM is not a union minister,he can do do whatever he wants! In this LM-ST fight it is ST who was caught with pants down. Secret marriage plan is busted. Seducing ministers, cricketers, and film personalities is a common underworld practice but it is very sad to know that a Union Minister who was once an official candidate of India for the office of United Nations secretary General is such a freak. After 10 days I do not think BCCI will remove LM from his IPL post.If they remove him the perceived value of IPL will crumble like subprime mortgage.He paraded BJP treasurer to president in the IPL events,seem to have done his homework before exposing ST.But hope some better sense prevails .. all these mudslinging in front of international cricketers & media stops for good ASAP..
What the IPL has done for me is reducing the respect i had for certain cricket commentators. Moreover T20 is proving itself to be a game of chance rather than that of skill. Some people may feel that a format where Zimbabwe can trouble Australia on their day is a good thing, but for me thats the equivalent of tossing a die to decide the result of a match.
I’m glad you finally picked up on what I mentioned about the games in Ahmedabad. I can also safely say the balloon wasn’t anywhere near the stadium because the Motera is visible from quite a distance and the balloon was nowhere to be seen.
They have the balloon at certain venues, it was there during the Rajasthan-Punjab game as they showed it alongwith the ground. It’s when they show just the balloon and nothing else that you can tell they’re playing a recorded footage.
LKM might be taking a cue from the Beijing Olympics where it was rumored that the fireworks at the opening ceremonies were all virtual
I am not able to understand why everyone should be calling this a gimmick or atleast sound like they are being cheated. Organizing an event and telecasting live does take money and the organizers are entitled to make a profit. If everyone agrees to a pay channel mode of viewing the matches then there would not be any need for this kind of revenue generation.
Moreover, the ads on the giant scoreboards idea, was effectively used in Soccer world cup matches to run ads on the sideboards without interrupting the live telecast. This was advertised then as break-through technology and has become common-place now.
As long as we want to enjoy free television along with high quality broadcast and good players / matches, we should be ready for these “innovative” marketing techniques.
The problem is not with advertising per se, but the lack of good quality / innovative advertising. Tell me, would you rather watch the Fevicol ads or commentators saying the same stupid thing about the blimp match after match. In fact, after this over kill most of us are p***ed with brand MRF, so its crores of money gone down the drain for them.
Cheers!
Vasu
Disappointed to see this post so late after the discussion is almost over.
From what I hear, it is rather comical that the blimp became such a laughing stock. It wasn’t supposed to be so. The idea was to have a camera on it at each possible ground which would make all the advertising around it digestible. As it turned out, you are not allowed to have cameras high in the air according to security regulations. So the authorities were left with a big useless white balloon in their hands. But the show had to go on for the promised advertising, making commentators look ridiculous-er and ridiculous-er.
Coming to why many of you cannot see it in stadiums, it is not in all stadiums. I am not sure if this was how it was planned, but my guess is since it now acted as nothing more than a giant bloated hoarding, what difference would it make hiring or not hiring it. So all the blimp ads were played from replays. They did not even have live cameras positioned on them when aired.
It is something similar with the ads on big screen. If you look back at some of the first matches played, live feed cut to it and they played ads straight as it was supposed to be. However, the video and audio quality couldn’t be controlled and at times, you could see small parts of the screen going out of order or the sound from the screen being less than required. This obviously wouldn’t please the ad-men, and it became easier for the tv guys to use that old friend of theirs, replays.
I’m an American only getting to see the tournament by the 4 matches directv is showing on their 101 network. I did a search to see if there were any comments on this “blimp” and found this site. I love the sport of cricket, The HD broadcast picture quality is first rate and your stadiums look very modern. Frankly, calling this balloon a blimp makes your country look far less modern than I’m sure it really is. It looks precisely like a small WW2 barrage balloon that was originally white and has now faded to an ugly yellow, embellished with a cheap advertising sticker partially peeling off of it. Something this amateurish would have been laughed off of American television 20 years ago as totally unprofessional. Calling this balloon a “blimp” was a very poor attempt to show off India’s technology to a worldwide audience and in my opinion will do the absolute opposite.
This “balloon” was not laughed off american tv 20 years ago. Infact from what I can work out, this blimp has been operating in the us and around the world at olympic events for years. Its made by a company called “tcom” for the us military.
hi guys… forget about the blimp what is m.r.f pace foundation doing for the last 20 years. how many fast bowlers could they develop for the last 20 years?m.r.f shold replace dennis lilee and appoint some other capable person for training indian players.irfan pathan developed lots of his talents with the help of wasim akram of pakistan. iknow the indians wont be happy to hear any pakistani name but as an indian i think he can develop some great fast bowlers for india.pls pls pls forget about this m.r.f blimp s*** and try to make india proud ,that is my plea to m.r.f directors as i am soooo embarassed of what happened to india in 20 20 world cup 2010.and also to selectors do consider robin uttappa as he is a great player of fast bowling.cheers.