Ad pitch for world cup

as the master blaster took the pitch. There is an old lady counting her rosary beads, who erupts in delight when Sachin hits a six. Then there was the Cadbury commercial, where the girl runs past security, to the batsman, to celebrate a shot.

Sometimes using humour and sometimes passion, the best cricket ads have always stayed with us even after the season. This season began with a controversy with charges of racism against the Neo Sports promo ads that showed West Indies cricketers in India having a tough time. Keeping it safe, Max is celebrating cricket in true Caribbean spirit, with its cheery and colourful “Come, Play” campaign.

Nike has launched its first cricket ad ever and it is already being touted as among the best Nike commercials. The ad captures the passion of street cricket being played in a traffic jam while underplaying stars like Zaheer Khan and Sreesanth who are portrayed as onlookers. That also seems to be the case with the Tata Sky Hrithik Roshan commercial and the Pepsi campaign; both have fans dominating the screen. Says ad guru Alyque Padamsee: “Today’s cricket commercials are concentrating on the Big Idea rather than the Big Celebs. There’s nothing new that the stars can say, it is the people’s turn now.”

The coming month will see Xbox releasing its campaign around its new cricket game, showing the entire family playing cricket, while LG and Hero Honda will soon come up with new cricket campaigns. Sansui has already launched its ad with Rahul Dravid and Videocon and Samsung are expected to follow suit.

Nike hits streets

It took Agnello Dias, senior VP and executive creative director at JWT (J Walter Thompson) half an hour to come up with the “Gutsy Cricket” concept. It then took one month to shoot the film. “Though the ad has a spontaneous feel, it took us a lot of time to structure the script,” says Dias, who admits to playing cricket on the streets of Mumbai, “though, never in a traffic jam”. Dias, along with his team, planned every little detail to recreate the chaos of a traffic jam, including the man clipping nostril hair in the mirror and the statue of the Parsi gent. “This is how we actually play our cricket, rough and tough. We’ve tried to capture the phenomenon of street cricket from a first-floor view, that is, on top of a traffic jam,” says Dias. No models were used in the ad. “The idea was to use lean and mean bodies and everyday faces. Most of the faces in the ad are junior stuntmen.”

Zaheer Khan and Sreesanth are incidental and come only at the end, which is a first amongst cricket ad commercials. The script is bigger than the stars. “These cricketers believe they can play as well as the team.”

The brief for the ad was very precise: It was on how India has changed. “We’re far more confident and daring and focussed on winning now. This is what gutsy cricket is about.”

The energetic soundtrack was sung in Konkani, as “it’s fun and different”, and the ad was shot in Kajrat, near Mumbai, close to the sets of Bigg Boss. Dias recalls how during the shooting, some of the balls even landed in the Bigg Boss set.

Prahlad Kakkar’s verdict: It is every ad filmmaker’s dream film. We all wish we had made this film.

Tata sky’s paape

It’s not easy to upstage Hrithik Roshan. Even Abhishek could not manage it in Dhoom 2, but Paape has done it. Paape or the grassman in the Tata Sky commercial became so popular in his first outing where he disguises himself in grass to watch the matches up close and personal, that he was brought back in the Hrithik Roshan commercial as the star brand ambassador.

Marrying cricket and humour is not that easy. “In India, cricket evokes a lot of passion. And in this season of cricket commercials, where there’s a clutter, we had to be different. The brand is associated with wacky and over-the top humour and so the birth of the grassman,” says Ashish Khanzanchi, executive creative director at Rediffusion DY&R.

The ad highlights multiple camera angles for real viewing experience available in Tata Sky. “We decided to give it a candid feel and so it was shot on high definition video, instead of film, to give it the hidden camera feel.” To make it seem more real, most of the passers-by were just regular people on the street.

The ad was shot on the busy Mohammad Ali Road in Mumbai. Recounts Khanzanchi: “Such is our country that most people did not bother to stop and stare at the man in the grass suit. He even went up to buy chana and the chanawala was absolutely nonchalant as if this is completely normal.”

Kakkar’s verdict: The ad works because it is so unusual.

Pepsi billion bobs

For a creative director, a Pepsi cricket commercial is never easy. After all, Pepsi has long been associated with cricket and the cricket commercials have been among the most successful. After last World Cup’s men-in-blue campaign, this time Pepsi is back with “Ooh aah India, aaya India!” “Men-in-blue is a term still used as a coinage. We now wanted to give the fans a new chant that would stay with them,” says Soumitra Karnik, VP and senior creative director at JWT. “In fact, the chant is already catching on. I was at a bar the other day and some people started shouting it and I was very proud.”

Pepsi has traditionally relied on humour. Remember the World Cup ke shikari campaign for the World Cup in South Africa, where the crate of Pepsi is near a lion and the cricketers are desperate to fetch it? This time, they discard humour for passion. The idea is to involve the fans and get them to inspire the cricketers and hence Blue Billion cheer-athon. And so, instead of saying “Come back soon”, Pepsi chose to say, “Don’t come back”, that is, without winning.

“Our brief was that the fan-cricketer relationship is changing. Most cricket commercials have focussed on the stars, with an eye on the dressing room. Now we’re saying, ‘ladega toh jeetega’.”

The campaign is spread over seven ads, with five already on air and two more to go. The Sourav Ganguly commercial, where Sourav introduces himself and urges fans to chant Ooh aah India is amongst Karnik’s favourites. “I’m a big Ganguly fan and it came out before Ganguly made his comeback. It was our reaffirmation of the fact that we have not lost faith in him,” concludes Karnik, who thinks that every cricket commercial must be written from the perspective of a fan. “We are the biggest cricket fans and we think as a fan would think.”

Kakkar’s verdict: Bit of a letdown. It’s more Ooh, aah, ouch! than Ooh aah India!