Plugging on the cricket fad, the men in blue are taking their fans on such a breathtaking ride, literally, that we can’t help but wonder if the history of T20 World Cup of 2007 will repeat itself?
Collaborating the undying mood of cricket and the brand’s identity of bringing in friends (yaar) together, McDowell’s No.1 Soda designed a campaign using the feature of Facebook Live to make merry out of the honored tradition of sports loving friends coming together to watch a game of cricket.
Subroto Geed, Senior Vice President, Marketing at United Spirits said, “The idea was to simply align the campaign with the superstitions associated with cricket while watching it with friends and to take the campaign to the audience who no more watch the game passively but on multiple screens.”
Facebook live is a recent feature that allows you to describe what you’re filming prior to the broadcast, additionallythe number of viewers who are viewing you and a live feed of comments. Users will also have the option to be notified when the streamer goes live again. The feature was pegged as a competition to Meerkat and Periscope.
Posted by Rannvijay Singh Singha on Sunday, March 27, 2016
Posted by Rannvijay Singh Singha on Sunday, March 27, 2016
The traditional marriage of Yaari and cricket
An interactive game, where every ball is followed by a cheer or curse, cricket has built rituals where quite often one person from the group ends up making dubious or inane promises in the optimism of securing India’s victory. In such cases the entire group willingly or reluctantly takes part in folly.
“In the season of high drama, every brand released cricket related campaigns and the key challenge was to stand out from the cluster. The sole purpose is to create engagement and was aligned with the brand’s basis of strengthening the bond of brotherhood,” Geed further added.
Basing their brand on the tagline of ‘Yaari hai, Nibhana toh padega’ McDowells No.1 Soda played a campaign merging with the cricket season on social media. To build up the campaign, the soda brand brought youth icons, Rannvijay Singh and Manish Paul under one roof for a live act on Facebook. An innovative engagement witnessed the duo making and fulfilling wackiest ‘yaari promises’ during the fantastic India-Australia match last night, live in front of a million fans.
Blended with flippant attitude and humor the hosts with their squad swore to stand on one leg, perform a silly dance, use pom poms and much more by predicting the game.
Mc Dowell’s No. 1 Soda also initiated a contest where cricket crazy ‘yaars’ were urged to make and fulfil the craziest No. 1 Yaari promises, to celebrate their friendships and also get a chance to win some prizes.
Brownie points
Joining the bandwagon of cricket themed campaigns, the brand managed to carve out a path of exclusivity and novelty through their campaign. The campaign was designed keeping the ardent cricket season in mind which is high even on social media, thus tempting the brand to leverage on the Facebook live feature.
“Using the feature of Facebook Live was one of its kind and aided the brand to stand out from the rest, along with staying close to the cricket season,” shared Geed.
Facebook live is almost virgin when it comes to marketing, which worked in favour of the brand. Another luring concept of the campaign was the absence of a well-defined script. The hosts were spontaneous and maintained casualness thus making it relatable to the mood of the nation.
The massive youth fan base of both the hosts aided to grab more views and thus reached a wider audience. Social media agency was given the brief to find a sweet spot between cricket and Yaari which the brand is all about.
What could have been better
The brand sure aimed at making the campaign laid-back and relevant for the audience but personally I believe it was difficult to keep a tab on the match as well as the Live Facebook campaign where the hosts kept sharing the videos on the brands page along with that their personal Facebook handles.
Apart from that, the videos were raw, minus the editing thus making it a tad bit long and monotonous to consume.
Taking the humorous route, the videos shared the exact emotion that every other room with cricket audience went through. Every video on Rannvijay Singh and Manish Paul’s page received over 20k views and created engagement with around 3k to 8k likes on each page.
The hosts urged netizens to use the #No1Yaari to comment or tweet during the on-going activity.
To sum it up, the campaign allowed us to view the exact same adrenaline rush and curiosity every individual went through thus nurturing the feature of Facebook Live and making it interactive where the country could come together literally on the social media space.
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