Marketing Campaigns Catching up the World T20 fever

Cricket fever is gripping the entire nation with semi-finals of the ICC T20 world cup 2016 round the corner. Where cricket is nothing less than a religion in India, this sport has always been marketers’ choice to win the hearts of the people. Big bucks and huge fan base makes it the hot favorite for brands to join the sponsorship bandwagon. Major Brands spent close to Rs 25,000 -30,000 crores for advertising both in traditional and digital channels this year. According to Twitter, "the number of brands advertising on their platform in 2016 has raised by nearly 50% when compared to last year and 38% of cricket fans are actively looking for match promotions or competitions from sponsors". Last year the Star Sports #Mauka campaign went viral, this year too star sports is expected to garner Rs.150- 300 crores from digital space itself during the T20 world cup. Whopping numbers, isn’t it?

Let’s see what these brands are doing for this season.

#D20

Amongst all the campaigns something that instantly catches our eye is the #D20 dictionary for lovers during the T20 season by Durex on Facebook and Twitter. Quirky analogies between cricket and love such as Run out, Leg glance, Bouncers, caught off guard and many more are intriguing. The purpose of this campaign is to flare up the passion between couples while the game of cricket heats up the pitch.

#Flipkartgifcricket

The flipkartgif cricket has been one of the top trending topic on twitter engaging a lot of fans.Remember the book cricket we used to play at school with our textbooks? Flipkart just transformed that game into a digital one.Flipkart rolled out three gifs with flipping pages,the users have to hit the pause to score runs.The total of 4 chances are given to the user with digits ending with 2,4 and 6 considered as valid runs. Flipkart gave away gift vouchers of 1000 rupees to man of the match.

Cricket ka kheeda

When the cricket bug bites then be it your boss or your girlfriend, everything becomes secondary such is our love for cricket. This concept has been beautifully showcased by Cricbuzz in their whacky Television commercials with Cricket Ka Keeda campaign targeting 75 million tech savvy cricket fanatics.

#wt20 # Taiyaari Karlo

Mauka campaign was a huge hit last year. On the same lines star sports has come has come up with the new promotional video" Taiyaari Karlo" to engage with the fans. This campaign starring star cricketer MS Dhoni and specialist stylish Sapna Bhavnani received a mixed response and did not strike the same cords like the last years mauka campaign. #wT20 is the official hashtag by ICC for this season. The core idea being that team India will perform at its best in the field and so will with the Indian youth off the field.