A new campaign from edtech brand Unacademy called ‘The Greatest Lesson’ focuses on athlete ambassador Sachin Tendulkar’s setbacks to teach a lesson about commitment to studying, never giving up and to carry the tagline ‘Failure, The Fuel Of Champions’.
The online learning platform’s campaign, conceptualised by agency Lowe Lintas (Bangalore), is led by a hero film and leverages the company’s strategic association with Indian cricket’s greatest ever batsman – Sachin Tendulkar – who has signed up not only as a brand endorser, but also as a client mentor.
The campaign targets students aged between 14 and 32-years-old and sought to build affinity for the brand.
The film celebrates Tendulkar’s ‘never give up’ spirit, by initially showing some of the failures he faced during his long career (including his second ball duck dismissal on his 1989 ODI debut, the famous ‘shoulder before wicket’ incident against Australia at Adelaide in 1999, as well as former umpire Steve Bucknor’s erroneous dismissal of Tendulkar at Gabba in 2003) before featuring his great successes to drive home a message that setbacks should be seen as stepping stones to success.
The creative features cricket crowd montages, wickets, boundaries all sourced from footage from the BCCI, PCB, ECB, Cricket Australia and Sony Sports Network.
The full length spearhead spot debuted on digital and social platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube), before a shorter edit ran on television.
“Failure is a part of life. We all are bound to go through it. Ideally with grace. Whether it be an amateur learner or the God of cricket. Yet the amount of judgment it garners from the society stigmatises it, instead of shining a light on the immense power of learning it unleashes,” explained Lowe Limtas Regional Creative Officer Puneet Kapoor. “The sole purpose of this film is to give an apt high-pedestal and respect to failure, to inspire all learners.”
“Sachin has never been shown in this way. His determination, perseverance and hard work behind the glorified two and a half decades of sporting career is not highlighted enough. The intent behind this film is to motivate and inspire students and take a leaf out of Sachin’s great cricket journey and stay focussed towards their goals,” added Unacademy Chief Marketing Officer Karan Shroff.
The campaign team at Lowe Lintas included Creatives Puneet Kapoor, Arpan Bhattacharyya and Pulkit Khandelwal, Account Managers Sonali Khanna, Sudhir Nayak and Shantanu Pramanik, Planners Kishore Subramanian and Prashanth Murthy, with production by Ramesh Deo Productions and the hero ad director was Abhinay Deo.
Comment:
Launched at the start of March to leverage spiking cricket interest around the India v England test series and the IPL auction, the early campaign outcomes suggest that interest in Tendulkar remains high in India with the hero ad generating 3,153,474 YouTube views in 24 hours.
Tendulkar’s new roll with the brand isn’t just limited to appearing in marketing creative and fronting a new content-led platform, but to use him as a totem of working hard to become the best you can be and act as a mentor to students through interactive live classes.
He sits at the tip of Unacademy’s ‘Legends on Unacademy’ programme which sees well-known personalities share life lessons through live classes.
The campaign continues Unacademy’s focus on communicating to learners and motivating students to further its mission to use technology to democratise education.
India is one of the market’s at the forefront of the rise of ‘edtech’. A report published by Business Wire in April 2020 forecast India’s online education market will reach INR 360.3bn by 2024 and that it is expanding at a CAGR of 43.85% during the 2019-2024 period.
The category is undergoing fast growth linked to increased internet penetration and digitisation in the country.
Plus, the adoption of online learning during the COVID lockdown has also accelerated the trend.
Links:
Unacademy
Loew Lintas
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