Creative Execution

An exciting and fun experience was offered to the twittersphere to directly get involved in a cricket franchise in which almost every process of IPL was virtually adopted within twitter platform as opposed to a one-day offline event, giving an opportunity to meet and team up with their virtual buddies for real! An innovative web portal linking to the Twitter API was developed. 12 popular twitter personalities in Sri Lanka were chosen as franchise owners via community voting and based on their tweet records a virtual currency was distributed giving them the authority to bid for players who got registered.

Campaign recorded high engagement on Twitter with over 20,000 pre-event tweets from 1,500+ contributors reaching to 20 million+ impressions. During the campaign period, Etisalat Twitter share of voice increased by 285%. Follower’s growth increased by 30% On the day of the event hundreds of tweeps from all over the country gathered for the much-awaited event. Over 800 tweeps turned up to play and cheer their friends. The huge success of the event also generated earned media impressions valued at over Rs.1 million if paid for, and hundreds of user generated content.

Twitter is rapidly taking the country by storm with a rapid growth. An average twitter user in Sri Lanka spends more than 3 hours online compared to an average Internet user who spends only an hour. Hence these ‘tweeps’ are identified as powerful opinion leaders who would spread the word instantly to a bigger network. With the objective to become the most engaging brand on twitter while promoting “Etisalat PLAY” – a post-paid mobile plan to the youth segment. The World’s First “Twitter Premier League” was formed utilising the key insight that Cricket is the most enthusiastic topic among the Sri Lankan Twitter Community! The idea stemmed from the fact that the Indian Premier League (IPL) is a highly-followed and engaging sporting event on twitter; twitter was the place for them to cheer for their favourite teams, players as well as to air their opinions and criticism around the IPL.