Mumbai: With cricket mania in India reaching fever pitch and with more games coming up in the next couple of months, India’s favourite chocolate brand, Cadbury Dairy Milk has launched its latest campaign, #CheerForAllSports. Guided by the brand’s purpose to inspire generosity in people, the multichannel campaign aims to bring India together to cheer for the Indian athletes across other sports who will be playing during the same time as IPL. With this, the brand is taking another step forward to encourage India to share and participate in the happiness of others. This time, the brand is nudging that— ‘Har Indian team ki Khushi Mein Shaamil Hokar Dekho’, by supporting Indian athletes as they compete in wrestling, boxing, hockey, table tennis and other tournaments across the globe.
The idea #CheerForAllSports is also being manifested at the back of a tech-enabled engagement wherein the special Rs 100 pack of Cadbury Dairy Milk— with a unique font at the front with each letter representing a different sport, comes with a QR code. This code, when scanned, will lead to a microsite with a calendar of other sporting events during the same period as the upcoming IPL season. This dedicated microsite allows users to sign up for reminders and includes links to watch and support India in other sports. Taking this a step further, the brand has made arrangements for screens to be put up at stadiums where Indian athletes will be playing, to showcase the people who join the stream to cheer for the Indian athletes. When a viewer joins the link shared via the microsite, they will join thousands more as they all come together to cheer for India— no matter where they are!
Speaking on the idea behind the campaign, Mondelez India VP marketing Nitin Saini said, “Over the years, Cadbury Dairy Milk has been successfully fostering the spirit of generosity through its heartfelt campaigns. We have been consistently shining a spotlight on the unacknowledged, such as the ground staff and women in sports. Therefore, this year, we are taking the idea of generosity a step forward to other sports with Cadbury Dairy Milk #CheerForAllSports campaign. In a cricket loving nation like India, laurels won by athletes of other sports can often go unnoticed. Through this campaign, we aim to change this narrative and get India to cheer for athletes across other sports. We hope that our campaign inspires consumers to participate in the happiness of talented Indian athletes, evoking a sense of acchai and mithaas around all of us.”
Ogilvy India chief creative officer Sukesh Nayak commented, “#CheerForAllSports is our labor of love that's been 8 months in the making. In India, cricket is nothing short of a religion. It enjoys fandom that is unfathomable. But there are countless sports and countless sportspersons that remain unacknowledged, no matter the glory they bring our nation. This IPL season, Cadbury Dairy Milk is proud to create a platform to help celebrate these unsung sports and their heroes. The biggest challenge was to conceptualize an entire ecosystem that would revolutionize how every Indian could easily cheer for and lend their support to all sports. This phygital ecosystem was painstakingly engineered through association with sporting federations to integrate live digital and on-ground fan experiences. #CheerForAllSports will help curate the season's sporting calendar on an immersive and experiential microsite where you can watch live games along with Yuvi and Bhaji, and most importantly, brings all of these fans right into the stadium to create a thundering cheer for our unsung heroes.”
Wavemaker India chief client officer & office head – west Shekhar Banerjee further highlighted, “We are trying to achieve something ingenious. We will be leveraging the scale of IPL to get the cricket cheering audiences to #CheerForAllSports. For this we have partnered with Star Sports, Jio Cinema and some of the popular sports celebrities in India. We are excited about how our online platform will enable participation and support cricket audiences to virtually cheer for the Indian team participating in other sports”.
Along with the shorties with Yuvraj and Harbhajan who are seen celebrating the win for other sports, the brand through their main film also captured key Indian table tennis, hockey, wrestling and boxing athletes including Sharath Kamal, Diya Chitale, Hardik Singh, Varun Kumar and Deepak Puniya. In the film, these accomplished athletes talk about their experience of winning glory for the country in an empty stadium, and how this affects every sportsman’s morale. The film also shows Yuvraj and Harbhajan talking about their experiences through their career, playing for a stadium of fans cheering them on, and how they would want the same for all athletes representing India. The film goes on to show what having fans by their side, supporting them would mean for athletes.
"As we all know, in India the popularity of other sports is not as much as cricket is. Through its #CheerForAllSports campaign, Cadbury Dairy Milk is encouraging people to cheer for Indian athletes from other sports, which is a positive change. Amongst the many sportspeople, the campaign features some stars like Sharath Kamal (TT), Varun Kumar, and Hardik Singh (Hockey). #CheerForAllSports will get these stars in the spotlight and generate more support for non-cricket sports!” added Sporjo COO Jigar Rambhia.
This unique campaign will be supported by a 360-degree approach, including on-ground and in-store activations, along with OOH activations outside the cricket stadiums. Cadbury Dairy Milk will also bring this alive through partnerships on social media and platforms such as The Bharat Army and CricBuzz, along with influencer engagement, and strategic engagement on social media channels.
