Ahead of the first over of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2019 season, telecoms giant Vodafone rolled out the latest iteration of its tournament focused ‘Unofficial Sponsor Of Fans’ national campaign.
The latest edition of this content led cricket marketing initiative sees a Vodfaone FANtatsic Breaks Contest offer fans and customers a chance to win prizes – including an opportunity to win an iPhone X every match – by answering simple cricket and trivia questions.
The initiative incentives fans to participate during the ad breaks ion each match by visiting the Vodafone website, or the MyVodafone app, or logging on to Vodafone Zoozoo Facebook page, or just dial *202# where they are asked to answer simple questions to be in with a chance to win one of several exciting prizes during every commercial break (and iPhone X every match).
The campaign, which aims to help ramp up cricket fever across India, broke on 22 March with a new pre-season ‘ZooZoos’ commercial running on national television and across the brand’s digital and social channels including YouTube
and Twitter.
The cricket season is back and so is your favourite contest. That's right, the Unofficial #SponsorOfFans brings you FANtastic Breaks Contest.
So get ready to play every match ad break and stand a chance to win iPhones. Visit https://t.co/rjeMgJ0MLi pic.twitter.com/xHLPZMfD6E— Vodafone (@VodafoneIN) March 23, 2019
The campaign content pieces carry the #SponsorOfFans hashtag and drive viewers online to learn more about the initiative, the contest and the brand’s services, plans and products at https://bit.ly/2TWT6Qj.
“Vodafone has always believed in celebrating the spirit of the fans and adding to the excitement of the sport. Launched last year, ‘Unofficial Sponsor of Fans’ was a huge success as it was led by consumer insight and emotions and helped us engage with our customers in a meaningful way,” commented Vodafone India Chief Digital Transformation Officer and Brand Officer Kavita Nair.
“This year, we are making a bold move and going digital only. A lot of our audiences are on the digital medium and a lot of conversation happens on the social media platforms, making it an obvious choice for us. We hope that we are able to delight our customers as we always endeavor to.”
Comment:
Vodafone has strong heritage of linking with sports properties around the world (from F1 and polo, to badminton, football and cricket) and this latest IPL initiative continues that approach.
Last year’s campaign was largely judged as being immensely successful and Vodafone certainly emerged as one of the buzziest brands during the IPL.
And with a staggering 5m YouTube views on its own channel in its first 72 hours alone, this year’s iteration is off to a good start according to top level engagement metrics.
The official line is that the campaign reflects Vodafone’s belief in celebrating the fans of the game, but an alternative viewpoint might be that it is piggybacking the tournament – the sporting crown jewel in a country that considers cricket as something of a religion – to spoil in-game official advertising.
This sees a tech focused brand celebrate the country’s top sports property with a digital savvy campaign.
While a further strand of Vodafone’s IPL leverage programme is its official association with Hotstar as ‘Co-Presenting Sponsors on Hotstar for
At Activative we’ve found Vodafone’s ZoosZoos cricket campaign characters a guilty advertising pleasure since back in 2013 (see case study) and we sneakily liked the Superfans campaign from 2017 too (see case study).
Links:
Vodafone
https://twitter.com/vodafonein
https://www.facebook.com/zoozoo
https://www.youtube.com/user/vodafoneipl
https://www.instagram.com/vodafoneindia
https://plus.google.com/+vodafoneindia
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