(13 May 2006 6:00 pm)

MUMBAI: When it comes to selling television sets one of the biggest drivers is sports. The Fifa World Cup kicks off on 9 June 2006 in Germany.

Looking to capitalise on this passion that the sport engenders in certain parts of the country is LG.

The company has launched its Golden Boot Offer in Goa, West Bengal, Kerala, Jharkhand and the North East States. Talking to indiantelevision.com about the initiative LG India marketing head Sandeep Tiwari says, "We are looking to sell 200,000 television sets this season. We recently launched a new model for our 29 inch category and also for our slim section.

"Basically the offer has been inspired by the concept of the Golden Boot in football. The player who scores the most goals gets a Golden Boot. Similarly, in our scheme when a consumer in the above mentioned areas buys a television set he gets a scratch card. Depending on the number of goals written on the card he gets a souvenir."

The souvenirs come in the form of Reebok soccer balls, Adidas T-Shirts, Kodak cameras, LG DVD players. A person who gets a scratch card with the number five on it gets a soccer ball and a T-Shirt. "In these parts of the country a soccer promotion works better than cricket. They follow closely the performances of their favourite teams and the write ups that players get.

"The reason why we are not doing a nationwide promotion around soccer is that different markets have different priorities. In the North we are pushing ACs. In the West we will be doing a push to coincide with Ganesh Chaturthi in August. We realise that soccer is a niche sport. Also the one time that we can do a promotion is when the World Cup is held. The other football leagues are not as effective in terms of promotional activities to create awareness. We have earmarked a 50 million budget on this soccer promotion" explains Tiwari.

He adds that cricket is very different in terms how one can use it. After all each event that the Indian cricket team plays in is an effective marketing platform. Promotions around cricket needless to say are not restricted to the World Cup.

Coming back to the Golden Boot Offer LG deliberately did not go in for a contest kind of an initiative as it wants to make its promotion as simple as possible. Besides with the Golden Boot Offer being done everybody is a winner as nobody goes home empty handed.

Further, LG is also hoping that the soccer World Cup will boost sales of the different products in its television line up. It is not looking to push any kind of television set in particular. Tiwari also mentions the home theatre systems that he feels people will buy for a more fuller experience at home. LG will be using local newspapers and television channels to create awareness about its offer.

However, the promotional activities will not have any celebrities. Right now LG is not looking at doing cross promotional activities with any other firms around football. LG is also focussing on its showrooms as in improving the displays and also educating its personnel on the nuances of the different products.