SET MAX gears up for IPL's second innings

SET MAX is gearing up for the launch of the second season of the DLF Indian Premier League (IPL), slated to begin from April 10th. The channel has launched a TVC announcing the upcoming second season. The new spot takes a humorous look at how the IPL has managed to make nation boundaries redundant.

The spot opens on a shot of barren land, where a voice over announces that while god made the land that we live on, man made the boundaries. Otherwise, the voice over announces, we would have a situation where people from a particular part of the world would be practicing whatever they do best in places they would never be thought to live in. The spot shows a typical Indian champiwala giving hair massages in Tokyo, and other such quirky examples of displaced characters taken out of their environments. Now, the voice over announces, that is all set to change. The spot shows a south Indian girl praying for Andrew Symmonds, another girl called Razia praying for Virendra Sehwag while a nun from a convent is shown saying a prayer for Dhoni. In Punjab, a village is shown collectively praying for Sri Lankan cricketer Sangakkara. The spot ends with the voice over saying that this happens only in the home of MAX.

Watch the TVC here:

Gaurav Seth, vice president, Marketing, SET MAX explains, "We wanted to get people into the IPL frame of mind. Last year, we had the whole Manoranjan ka baap theme, where we positioned the IPL as the ultimate in entertainment. The key thought with the new TVC was to break all boundaries, since the first season of IPL managed to break all boundaries across India, whether of caste, creed or country. This is just the first part of the long campaign that we are going to run, in the build up to the IPL, which will run till the end of February. Our objective has always been to showcase the grandeur of the IPL and how it affects viewers and this spot is an affirmation of that."

He further adds, "The key task for us was in trying to understand how to re-introduce the IPL to the audience, for the second season. We really studied the effect of the IPL on Indian audiences, and realized that for the first time, this overpowering formula of gathering international cricket all under one local club team has really ignited the imaginations of Indians across the country."

The spot has been created by Sony's in-house on-air programming team. TBWA India works on the Sony, SET MAX account and Seth says the agency will be involved with the IPL campaign after this initial phase.