TEN Cricket takes 'One India One Jersey' route to promote Indo-Lanka series

The India - SriLanka cricket series begins 21 July, and broadcaster TEN Cricket has launched a campaign 'One India. One Jersey.' The campaign created by Contract Advertising (Delhi) seeks to show that India, despite its diversity, comes together as one nation to cheer its team.

A set of four TVCs of no more than 20 seconds each show people from different financial and professional backgrounds wearing the same jersey, showing their allegiance to the Indian team.

WATCH the other three commercials from the campaign here:

Atul Pande, chief executive officer, TEN Sports, said, "In the recent cricket scenario, the only high point for the entire nation was the World Cup 2011 victory. Even IPL had the nation fragmented with each region rooting for their region's team. But we wanted to build on the fact that for an individual, passion for Team India transcends everything. Hence the idea - One India. One Jersey."

Juju Basu, executive creative director, Contract Advertising, said, “We know that the channel doesn't need an ad to convince the country to watch the Indian cricket team play. Our challenge was to take this opportunity and make it a larger idea that the channel could appropriate. The creative idea is a showcase of how cricket unites disparate people from various walks of life. The campaign required a manifestation of that unity. And therefore the campaign title: One India. One Jersey. In other words, the Jersey becomes the metaphor for cricket which unites our country.

Pande added that the campaign will be extended to online medium, through Facebook, to facilitate fan interaction and enable a feedback mechanism. He explained that TEN's Facebook application will allow a fan to create a jersey bearing his or her unique message - one s/he wants to send out to the team. The fans coming up with the most interesting messages will be taken to SriLanka to support the team in person.

The agency has created a promotional spot featuring Sanjay Manjrekar to drive traffic on Facebook. Watch the spot here:

"The budget set aside for the campaign is around Rs 5 to 6 crore," said Pande. Out of this, 60 per cent would be spent on TV, 28 per cent on digital and 12 per cent on radio.

Apart from the Zee and TEN Network channels, the campaign would be aired on some other news (Hindi and English), music, movie and lifestyle channels.

"We won't be airing the campaign on external GECs because that would be too expensive for an event-based campaign such as this," Pande added.

The break up of media to be used between the two networks (Zee, TEN) and the external cluster of channels is 40:60. TEN Cricket has also partnered DTH service providers Tata Sky and Airtel to use their advertising opportunities to promote the campaign. Pande said that the channel is also in conversation with a few other DTH players.

Unplugged moments:

Anshuman Ahluwalia, group account director, Contract Advertising, said that the TVCs were co-directed by Kamal Bhatnagar, creative director, Contract Advertising. "He also starred in one of the spots. He is the guy doing shirshasana, a yoga posture, in one of the TVCs," he added.

Credits:

Client: TEN Cricket
Agency: Contract Advertising, Delhi
Team Contract: Juju Basu, Kamal Bhatnagar, Anshuman Ahluwalia, Shayan Chowdhury, Raghav Sikka, Aparajita Tomar, Sushant Baruah, Anjali Saxena
TEN Network: Rajesh Jejurikar, Atul Pande, Prasenjit Basu, Vishal Sharma
Digital agency: Interactive Avenues - Rahul Marwah, Vibhor Mathur
Film production: att+ctrl+del - Sriram Ramanathan
Media agency: MEC