More than just a farewell
Which is your best campaign and why have you chosen it? Which year was the campaign launched?
I have been part of many memorable campaigns but the one I remember most fondly was the #RetireTheJerseyNo10 for Mumbai Indians (MI) in December 2012. This was immediately after Sachin Tendulkar announced his retirement from white ball cricket. Tendulkar was a member of MI in the Indian Premier League (IPL) but more importantly, he was a national icon who had so many records to his name in One Day Internationals and he wasn't going to play any longer. This campaign was special because retiring a jersey (number) is a concept which is extremely popular in the West, especially in football. But here in India and in cricket, it wasn’t heard of. So I am happy that we started a new initiative. It was a digital campaign and we used the two most popular social media of the time — Facebook and Twitter.
What did the campaign achieve for the brand? Could you also share some numbers to corroborate your claim?
It created a lot of buzz for MI even when the IPL season wasn’t on. We received over 12,000 tweets in a span of three days. Once, 50 tweets with #RetireTheJerseyNo10 hashtag were posted, it helped the MI reach over 87,500 people, creating more than 36 million impressions. On Facebook, the campaign received great response too. It highlighted moments from Tendulkar's amazing career and asked fans to join the initiative on Twitter. Overall, it was shared over 28,000 times and drew 1,75,000 Facebook Likes and received over 10,500 comments in the first three days. In doing so, it engaged 2,50,000 users and generated over 7.7 million views.
But what was even more satisfying was that in 2017, the Board of Control for Cricket in India decided to “unofficially” retire the jersey. So, we came a full circle when that eventually happened and the movement we started certainly had a part to play in it.
What was the key idea behind the campaign?
The idea was pretty straightforward. We had a legend bidding adieu and we had to do something for him as he had done so much for the country. I must add that it wasn’t the client who came to us with the idea and there was no brief as such; instead we, on our own, pitched the idea to them. And as I mentioned before, Tendulkar’s popularity cut across IPL franchises and that was reflected when even fans of rival clubs joined and shared and retweeted. Perhaps because the idea was designed to encompass the whole country, we received feedback without using any influencers and got organic PR when many websites shared the message on their own without us having to go to them.
What were the execution challenges?
Time was a big constraint. We got to know about Tendulkar's decision a few days before the formal announcement was made but weren’t sure about the date. So, it could have been on a weekday or a weekend but either way, we had to keep it ready and roll it out as soon as he announced. Thanks to the hard work put in by the team, we were able to launch it within hours of him making the announcement. Also, one has to be careful when one is dealing with such a big superstar. We had designed a special petition app for the cause on FB and the number of those who signed up had to be updated in real time to draw more people — a challenging task in itself.
Given a chance, what would you do differently?
If I was to do something like that in 2018, I would take a more integrated approach and also include a platform such as Instagram, which is far more popular today than it was back then. A television film would have also done good because many Tendulkar fans did not have digital presence in 2012 and TV would have helped us to connect with the rural masses as well.