At first, Reliance Mobile planned to use Dhoni in this TVC... but he was busy!
Kids have literally been ruling the Indian ad arena for quite sometime now. With ads like ‘Daag acche hain’ to ‘I’m a Complan boy’ – the new age kids have grown to be a consumer class and ready to make the world their playground. The latest addition to this cute ‘little’ genre is the Reliance Mobile advertisement showing young ones in the age group of 6-10 years, padding up to fulfil their cricketing dreams.
India has always been a cricket savvy nation, where cricket is a religion and cricketers worshipped as gods. However, the debacle in West Indies early this year left cricket enthusiasts cynical and even the staunchest advertisers shied away from the game. Cut to September 2007 and the game of cricket got a new lease of life with World Cup T20. But, the big names in the advertising arena were missing. That did not deter Reliance Mobile from becoming the official sponsor of the T20 World Cup. With the usual high decibel promotions surrounding the World Cup missing, Reliance Mobile tried to cash in on these chhote matches, using cutesy kids who chanted, Chhote match, bade sapne.
But that’s not how it all started. Reliance Mobile had roped in Dhoni as the official brand ambassador and were planning to launch an ad campaign starring Dhoni. However, Dhoni was hard-pressed for time and unable to give dates for shooting. States K. V. Sridhar, National Creative Director, Leo Burnett (agency responsible for creating the latest campaign), “Although Dhoni was the brand ambassador, we still did not build the creative around him, as he had very little time before the team descended for the T20 World Cup.”
With Dhoni ruled out, the creative team sat down to script the storyboard, and the common idea that floated around was that of Chhote Match, considering T20 was the smaller version of the 50 over match. This led to the creation of the Slogan – Chhote match bade sapne. And who better to take forward the theme that all good things come in small packages – of course, cute little kids carry cute communication better.
Kids have literally been ruling the Indian ad arena for quite sometime now. With ads like ‘Daag acche hain’ to ‘I’m a Complan boy’ – the new age kids have grown to be a consumer class and ready to make the world their playground. The latest addition to this cute ‘little’ genre is the Reliance Mobile advertisement showing young ones in the age group of 6-10 years, padding up to fulfil their cricketing dreams.
India has always been a cricket savvy nation, where cricket is a religion and cricketers worshipped as gods. However, the debacle in West Indies early this year left cricket enthusiasts cynical and even the staunchest advertisers shied away from the game. Cut to September 2007 and the game of cricket got a new lease of life with World Cup T20. But, the big names in the advertising arena were missing. That did not deter Reliance Mobile from becoming the official sponsor of the T20 World Cup. With the usual high decibel promotions surrounding the World Cup missing, Reliance Mobile tried to cash in on these chhote matches, using cutesy kids who chanted, Chhote match, bade sapne.
But that’s not how it all started. Reliance Mobile had roped in Dhoni as the official brand ambassador and were planning to launch an ad campaign starring Dhoni. However, Dhoni was hard-pressed for time and unable to give dates for shooting. States K. V. Sridhar, National Creative Director, Leo Burnett (agency responsible for creating the latest campaign), “Although Dhoni was the brand ambassador, we still did not build the creative around him, as he had very little time before the team descended for the T20 World Cup.”
With Dhoni ruled out, the creative team sat down to script the storyboard, and the common idea that floated around was that of Chhote Match, considering T20 was the smaller version of the 50 over match. This led to the creation of the Slogan – Chhote match bade sapne. And who better to take forward the theme that all good things come in small packages – of course, cute little kids carry cute communication better.
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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008
An IIPM and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist) Initiative
