MUMBAI: Even as the country enjoys the ICC Cricket World Cup and its vibrant Mauka campaign, Multi Screen Media’s (MSM) IPL right holder Sony Max has launched its campaign for the flagship tournament. It’s indeed a daring attempt to launch a cricket oriented campaign when every cricket fan in India is either speaking about World Cup or Mauka.
India ka Tyohaar, which implies to festival of India, is Sony’s campaign for IPL 2015. The campaign reverberates around the concept of how IPL is a festival of unity. DDB Mudra orchestrated the campaign and a series of videos were released on both television and social media platforms. It must be noted that last year the campaign was conducted by Havas Media and was called Come on bulava aaya hai.
Among the videos launched so far, Firework has garnered maximum views on YouTube. The humorous video starts with a look alike of Shah Rukh Khan asking price of a cracker and he sees Salman Khan’s look alike and goes and hugs him. Basically IPL is portrayed as festival of unity, which successfully merges many distances and dilutes animosity.
In a span of six days the video managed 60,922 views, which is commendable compared to their last year's videos on YouTube.
The video is likely to get more popularity as the tournament comes closer. The parody was trending on social media for a brief time after its release.
The second video that the channel launched was titled Office. The video starts with an office boy choreographing dance moves to celebrate various glorious moments and the executives follow him. At the time of penning the article, the video has managed 26,448 views.
The third video is called Auto, which shows how India prepares for a festival and people easily agree to compromise. The video is targeted to the crazy youth who unitedly plan for a match and watch it together. The video has garnered 36,209 views so far.
Last year’s campaign Come on bulava aaya hai had four videos shared on the social media platforms of which the Ghost video garnered maximum views with 382,457 hits. The video starts with a priest trying his level best to free a conjured body but the spirit refuses to leave the victim. When the priest is about to give up the IPL siren blows and the spirit comes out to say mera bulava aagaya.
In another video the creative agency targeted the Bengal audience where they show a Bengali wife running away from the wedding ceremony to catch IPL action. This video managed to garner one third of the previous one with only 119,577 in more than a year time.
Humor was very much evident in last year’s campaign too. In one of the video they show a mother is about to expire and wants to share something very important with her son. The paranoid son waits eagerly for his mother’s disclosure and when she starts talking, the siren blows and the son runs away leaving his mother on death bed to catch IPL action. The video has got 93,475 views in more than a year's time.
Considering the circumstances and timeline, the progress made by the campaign so far should be an encouragement to the organizing committee.
When queried about the campaign sources in MSM revealed that a few more teasers will be released in the coming days. “The released videos have done well so far and we will have a few more videos hitting public forum in the coming days,” said the source.
