LinTeractive's campaign for starsports.com says "Keep Calm and Watch Pepsi IPL"

Lowe Lintas + Partners has been awarded the campaign for promoting Starsports.com as the online viewing destination for Pepsi IPL 2014. The ‘on and offline’ responsibilities, will be handled by LinTeractive and Lowe Lintas respectively. The campaign kicks off with a ‘Keep Calm Music Video’, followed by a lot of interesting engagements on social media to bring alive the idea in a way that it resonates with the young IPL viewing audience.

This is the first time that a dedicated campaign has been launched to promote online streaming of Pepsi IPL. Earlier, this year Star India licensed the digital distribution rights for Pepsi IPL 2014 from Times Internet. Star India will now offer streaming and video on demand on starsports.com, the Star Sports app, and on mobile operator services powered by Star Sports – giving IPL enthusiasts a one-stop destination for not missing out on the action.

“Unlike others, young people actually thrive in the chaos of their multi-demanding life. They achieve this by using handheld devices as a way to chill-out from all the madness that surrounds them –and IPL at its core is all about entertainment and forgetting all the mundane-ness” – This understanding is what led us to the campaign idea of offering the starsports.com destination as a way to “Keep Calm” this IPL season, says Arun Iyer, NCD of Lowe Lintas + Partners, the agency behind the campaign.

The campaign aims to speak the language of this group. "We really wanted to keep it as raw and real as possible. Very rarely do we get opportunities to cast real faces, and that was exciting. We went about this in a very organic way. Kept our instinct alive, more than logic and kept adding to the script and situations along the way. And basically had fun in the entire process without overbraining anything. The entire team that worked on it was young, including the director Kishore Iyyar and the music director Prashant Pillai. That certainly brought in a lot of freshness." said Rajesh Ramaswamy, ECD, Lowe Lintas.

The marketing campaign aims to target the latent need of Young India to stay connected with all the IPL action irrespective of where they are and whatever they are upto, since their lives are increasingly busier than ever before. The campaign fulfills this need by offering to them ‘all the action’ on their screen of choice, i.e., handheld and portable devices.
The upcoming executions will be heavily focussed on digital engagements with an ongoing social strategy to keep the conversation going. Multiple digital channels are being deployed as a part of this to drive more people to see IPL on starsports.com

Speaking of the engagement plan, adds Vikas Mehta, CMO, Lowe Lintas and Partners, “While great content (the ‘keep calm’ video in this case) helps create interest in the brand, to deliver business impact, the thought needs to be driven as an ongoing conversation to sustain that interest. We believe brands must create engaging conversations to hold people’s attention in the long-format digital|social space. This is an exciting opportunity for our teams at Lowe Lintas and LinTeractive to join forces and create a seamless campaign for starsports.com”

The entire engagement is expected to last through the tournament and started with Youtube, where the videos have crossed a million views within the first week. The films are also being played across key channels of Star India and other network channels.

Speaking on the occasion, Ajit Mohan, EVP and Head, New Media, Star India, “The campaign reflects our ambition, our commitment to make IPL the biggest online sporting event in the world..” On the campaign, Ajit, added, “We believe that for this IPL, the mobile screen will become the first screen for a large number of sports fans. The creative is a fabulous take on how IPL fans can leverage our service to stay unaffected by the twists and turns that life throws at them. Arun and Lowe have been fabulous partners for us.”