IPL is a mood changer: Vaishali Sharma, MAX

Coming after two back to back T20 cricket tournaments – the Asia Cup and ICC World T20 – Indian Premiere League (IPL) Season 9 has adopted a somewhat different communication strategy this year, wherein it seeks to celebrate optimism and camaraderie.

This year’s Vivo IPL campaign, ‘Ek India Happywala’, implores every Indian in every corner of the world to build an empowered India – a nation that respects differences in its cultural fabric, but at the same time rises above those differences to create an atmosphere of dignity and harmony. A nation that the children will be proud to inherit. Hence, it implores the people to act today to create a better tomorrow.

Four films have been released so far as part of the campaign. The first film shows how children get together to diffuse situations that are tense and violence-laden in their own innocent ways. The second film shows a regular edit meeting at a TV newsroom, where the editor gets a glimpse of how cricket is a combining factor when a homeless man and his child are invited to watch an IPL match by a building’s security guard.

The third film reflects how unsafe today’s environment has become for women. A lady taxi driver becomes apprehensive when her boisterous male passengers ask her to take a shortcut through a dimly lit area. Sensing her apprehension, the guys, who are returning home after watching an IPL match, put her at ease and decide to take the regular route.

The recently released fourth film showcases the all-embracing nature of IPL. A caretaker at an old age home decides to watch an IPL match with a lonely old man and give him company instead of going over to his friends’ place to enjoy the match.

Over the last nine years, Sony has extensively promoted IPL not only on television but across other mediums like print, outdoor and digital. The marketing campaigns have become cultural mnemonics in household conversations. Right from ‘Ek Desh. Ek Junoon’ in 2009 to ‘India Ka Tyohaar ‘ in 2015, the message has been clear – Lets spread the cheer. And now, ‘Ek India Happywala’ attempts to engage viewers in conversations that will spread the cheer to our children, because it is our children who will inherit this world from us.

Speaking at an event to unveil the new campaign for Vivo IPL 2016 in March this year, NP Singh, CEO, Sony Pictures Networks India, had said, “From programming content to contribution to society, we want to make ‘Ek India Happywala’ our call to action. So, at Sony Pictures Networks India, our CSR initiatives will be cascaded under the aegis of ‘Ek India Happywala’. This is our way of ensuring that the ethos of the campaign stays alive much after Vivo IPL Season 9 is over.”

In this interaction with Adgully, Vaishali Sharma, Senior VP, Marketing & Communications, MAX, MAX 2 and MAX HD, speaks at length on the thought process behind the campaign, the various IPL campaigns over the years.

What was the creative thought behind the campaign?
Like every year, when we go back to the product, when we are doing the strategy we again look at various aspects of the product, the sporting event, IPL itself, the environment. The process and journey involves looking at various aspects and coming up with a very sharp insight that can actually lead to the campaigns for the year. So one of the things that we went back to was evaluate how the tournament performed last year and the kind of growth and the number of audiences we have seen – age group, gender – when we put that data together, I would say that IPL really cuts across generations, geographies, creed, culture. It is an event that facilitates bonding and camaraderie, in one sense I would say it is a mood changer – it excites, energises and inspires people. For me these were the key words that helped set new dimensions for the IPL campaigns for this year.

If you look at IPL, it is a connective opportunity and if I were to join it with one very key consumer insight which is tapping into the desire to see the world with hope and optimism – that is what IPL does to you and that is what we have brought alive in the campaign. After eight years, you don’t have to tell the people that IPL is about cricket.

Last year with ‘Tyohaar’ we had established the fact that IPL is the largest tournament, it’s something that we look forward to. So you don’t have to keep reiterating that it is cricket.

Given the environment today, which is full of apprehension, why not use the tournament as an opportunity to look at a brighter world. IPL brings millions of hearts together and has assumed a larger-than-life image.

What have been the key developments in IPL’s communication strategy over the years?
Every year for our communication we build on one particular brand attribute in  focussed way. If you look at the first campaign, which was ‘Manoranjan ka Baap’, it was very important to establish IPL and differentiate it from every other cricket tournament that people were used to viewing. First of all, it was the T20 format, which is far more exciting to watch. It brought together different players from different countries into one team. It had glamour and a lot more fun quotient. Even with ‘Extraa Innings’, the property that we put together added so much new dimension to the tournament. The aim was to establish IPL as entertaining cricket, which is why ‘Manoranjan ka Baap’.

The next 2-3 campaigns I would say were really borrowing from the current situations – whether it was Big B’s ‘junoon’, or a year after that welcoming back the tournament to India – it hinged on pride. Going forward to ‘Bharat Bandh’ – we moved on from just entertaining cricket to pride in the tournament. It had started to become such a big property with a huge fan following – that was what we wanted to convey in the ‘Bharat Bandh’ campaign, when almost the whole nation comes to a standstill. It was about establishing the largeness of the brand.

Moving on from there we launched ‘Jumping Jhapang’, which was all about engagement – how do I not be a passive viewer and, therefore, how do we get greater involvement. We added song and dance element into the campaign and brought in a celebrity element to it, which became so larger-than-life and iconic.

Last year we moved on to the fact that IPL was a celebration that brought people together and so we came up with ‘India ka Tyohaar’. By then IPL had become an established property, so the festival element celebrated the fact that IPL was the only ‘tyohaar’ that brought people together.

So, we have explored a whole lot of attributes over the nine years entertaining cricket, engagement, pride, celebration and larger-than-life image that no other event in the country has.