Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand: The recovery and rebuilding of his commercial brand

Viswanathan “Vishy” Anand (born 11 December 1969) is an Indian chess Grandmaster and a former World Chess Champion. Anand’s parents taught him to play chess and incubated the beginnings of his spectacular chess career. As a default they were also initially handling his commercial and endorsement rights, a field they were not conversant with.

This mentoring coupled with his own genius and ability created the “Lightning Kid” a global chess prodigy with the ability to play astoundingly quickly, keeping his opponents continually off balance.

Unfortunately, his parents lack of familiarity with the advertising and marketing world, resulted in their grossly underselling his endorsement rights. This in turn resulted in his being paid a fraction of his commercial worth and being associated with brands like Hajmola Memory Plus, OTC medication that claimed to improve memory and brain functioning and whose preferred form of publicity was wall painting on Government constructed lower income group housing.

This was the situation we were faced with when we took over Anand’s commercial representation in 1996.

Our Strategy

We realised that making the leap from what Anand was being paid for an endorsement at that time, to what we felt he should be paid, was not going to happen overnight. So we focussed on the recovery and rebuilding of his brand in India.

1.      We did not renew his endorsements with Glaxo Smithkline (for Horlicks) as they were not prepared to pay any more than they had been and with Hajmola Memory Plus as it was hurting his image. We requested Dabur, the company that owned the Hajmola brand, to deface the wall painting advertisements and they were kind enough to comply.

2.      We then focused on building media coverage for his career in India. At that time only The Hindu was covering his playing career with any consistency. As email was in its infancy, we sent out regular press releases to major news channels and publications by fax and offered them access to free hi-resolution images of him, from a professional photo shoot that had been commissioned by us. These press releases were written by his wife Aruna, who had the dual benefit of being there onsite with him at all his events and also being his wife, exposure to behind the scenes events, which always have a major bearing on a sportsperson’s results.

3.      For a year absolutely nothing happened except that the Indian media coverage of Anand and his career began to steadily improve. These were also the early years of the Indian TV news networks and NDTV, with my friend and professional associate Sonali Chander heading their sports desk, being of particular assistance.

The Turn Around

In 1996/97 we were approached by the Business India Group to have Anand appear at their IT World/COMDEX event in Delhi where he would play simultaneous chess against selected interested members of the public, using a computer interface. It was at this event that I was approached by Mr.Dewang Mehta to have Anand represent the entire Indian IT industry which was also at the beginning of a spectacular growth story. He was prepared to pay our new endorsement fee and divide the expense up amongst the various companies involved.

I was sorely tempted as this is what we had been trying to do and while Anand and his wife Aruna had been extremely patient and supportive of our efforts, we needed to show results.

But the more I thought about it, I figured that even this vastly increased fee when divided up amongst the various companies involved would take us right back to Square 1, in terms of what each company was paying to associate themselves with Anand. So I went back home to Chennai and started sending out endorsement proposals to each IT company individually.

And we got a reply from Mr. Shiv Nadar at HCL who said he had forwarded our proposal to Mr. Rajendra Pawar at NIIT and we would be hearing from them shortly.

NIIT Ltd. signed Anand as their brand ambassador in late 1997, a relationship that continues till date and is now the longest running endorsement in the history of Indian marketing and advertising.

The Results

In the 22 years that we represented Anand we obtained for him commercial income, completely above and beyond his chess earnings, of around US$ 2 Million.

We signed endorsements for him with NIIT, AMD, Parle Products and TVH, obtained for him motivational speaking and simultaneous chess exhibition appearances from a range of sponsors and successfully also obtained for him a large non-refundable up-front guarantee from a promoter who was trying to put together an Anand Vs Kasparov event in Reykjavik, Iceland based on the iconic Bobby Fisher Vs Boris Spassky World Championship event that was held there in 1972.

The Learning

1.      Marketing a personality in a niche sport is difficult but not impossible.

2.      Have clarity in what you are attempting to do and develop a strategy to get you there.

3.      If the strategy is moving the project forward positively, keep the faith, persevere and do not get discouraged by the lack of immediate results.

4.      Add value on both sides of the equation. That is what ensures longevity of a commercial partnership like NIIT and Anand and research has proven that sponsorship benefits to any brand, accrue from a long term commitment to the sponsored property.