Cadbury Dairy Milk’s #CheerForAllSports campaign, which rolled out from March through May, aimed to bring Indians together by celebrating the country’s athletes in all (underrepresented) sports in a country obsessed by cricket.
The marketing burst, which was conceptualised by agency Ogilvy India and which took on the nation’s sporting behemoth by rolling out during the 2023 Indian Premier League (IPL) tournament, seeks to enable and celebrate connections and engagements between the nation’s athletes and fans through lesser known sports such as boxing, hockey and table tennis.
In India, cricket overshadows all other sports combined and thus many outstanding Indian athletes from other sports struggle to gain recognition and support, so Cadbury Dairy Milk and Ogilvy aimed to address this through #CheerForAllSports.
The campaign initially kicked-off with an anchor commercial called ‘Cadbury Dairy Milk #CheerForAllSports With Yuvi & Bhajji’ which dropped on 30 March and which encouraged viewers to cheer for India in all sports – not just cricket – and sought to drive them to the campaign’s webpage at https://www.cadburycheerforallsports.com/.
The spot starred former Indian cricket super stars Yuvraj and Harbhajan Singh who also invited viewers to ‘join them live on specially made fan screens erected by the brand inside stadiums so fans can virtually show their support for Indian athletes from all sports in real-time’.
The spot and its supporting executions end with the copy line: ‘Because when a sport finds a billion fans behind it, there will be no stopping India.’
The campaign’s consumer journey begin on-pack where Indian consumers are encouraged to scan the QR code on the bespoke packaging of the company’s iconic Dairy Milk bars (which retail for INR100) which will lead then to a bespoke campaign microsite which is spearheaded by a sporting calendar of all participating underrepresented sporting events taking place in India during the IPL.
This list-building initiative was hubbed around a site that also included details of the these events, how to follow, watch and attend them in person, as well as including a mechanic enabling them to digitally cheer on Indian athletes competing in these sports events by submitted their own videos.
The tournaments range from the IBA Men’s World Boxing Championships 2023, the World Table Tennis Star Contender 2023 and the Senior Asian Wrestling Championship 2023, while the Indian athletes who consumers are encouraged by the confectionary brand to cheer for include Nishant Dev, Mohammed Hussamuddin, Sathiyan Gnanasekaran, Manika Batra, Deepak Punia and Nisha Dahiya.
Many of the competing and featured athletes expressed their gratitude about seeing Indian fans supporting them on-screen and spoke about how this motivated them through their own social channels and via a series of online videos deployed across Cadbury’s Indian social channels.
These included ‘Cadbury Dairy Milk | Indian Table Tennis Players Grateful To Fans #CheerForAllSports’ (which dropped on 5 May) and ‘Cadbury Dairy Milk | Indian Boxing Team Grateful To Fans. #Cheerforallsports’ (which rolled out on 8 May).
Comment
In Indian, like in many other markets around the world, Cadbury’s marketing strategy includes a strong sporting pillar. Indeed, notable recent campaigns have ranged from ‘Proud Sponsor Of Ground Staff’ and 2021’s ‘Good Luck Girls’ in India, to its 2022 ‘Manchester United FC’ activation programme and its 2022 ‘Game Is On’ and ‘Become A Supporter And A Half’ initiatives with the FAI in Ireland.
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