Results and Effectiveness

While every advertiser flooded channels with expensive TV campaigns, we turned the fans into our medium. In just one month, Indian Panga League was a super hit. It became the 3rd most subscribed You-tube channel in India, with 1-million hits on Youtube, 1.5-million hits on the website, 60,000 mentions on Twitter and 2791 fans on Facebook. But it was millions of cricket fans, who spread the word for us through various websites, blogs and emails. The campaign was also covered by major newspapers, and it was termed as the boldest and the most outrageous campaign in a long time.

Creative Execution

We created 105 short films, which were nothing but verbal battles, capturing the spirit of sledging that exists between the fans of rival teams. These battles happened over Virgin Mobile's cheap inter-state call plan, making the product integral to the conversation. These films went online each day during the 45-day long cricket event. Each film was more provocative than the other, and accessible on a specially created website called www.indianpangaleague.in, facebook, youtube and other social media sites.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Indian Premier League (IPL) – the Twenty20 format of cricket – is the biggest event in India that features 8 state teams. During the IPL season, Virgin Mobile wanted to advertise its lowest inter-state call rates. We did this innovatively, by creating India Panga League (Panga: a hindi word for taking potshots at someone). This alternate ‘League’ featured verbal battles between 8 passionate cricket fans from 8 different states, over inter-state calls. But more importantly, while everyone was spending millions on TV, we turned to our fans and went online, where the target audience was already watching live streams of the matches.