Cannes Lions
BATES 141, Mumbai / VIRGIN / 2011
Overview
Entries
Credits
Execution
While other telecom brands were busy spending millions on mass media, we turned to a better medium – millions of cricket fans. We created 105 short films portraying verbal battles between 8 passionate cricket-crazy fans, over Virgin Mobile’s cheap inter-state call plan. The films spoke about the things that fans really talk about - laced with tongue-in-cheek humour, jabs on popular cricketers, insights into current affairs, and references to cricket scandals. We hosted the videos on our website www.indianpangaleague.in and invited users to take pangas (pot shots) at supporters of rival teams. The videos were also posted on Youtube, Facebook and other social networking websites.
Outcome
While major advertisers flooded sports channels with expensive TV campaigns (competition spent anywhere between $500 million - $700 million during the IPL), we turned the fans into our medium. Our mass-media spends? $0.Within just 3 weeks, the campaign witnessed 500,000 Youtube views, 2,590 Facebook fans, 50,000 mentions on Twitter and 1.5 million hits on the website! The campaign was picked up and featured by most major newspapers in the country, and as a result, the viewership shot up by astronomical proportions. It has been perceived as the boldest and most outrageous campaign to roll out in the country in a very long time.
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