Brand spots with a generous dollop of cricket mania

Sample our roundup of ads capturing the cric-frenzy around the ongoing ICC World Cup season.

Although cricket does not enjoy the official status of being our national sport, it is far from being 'just another sport'. It commands a significant amount of excitement and maintains a gigantic fan following, compared to other sports.

Gulf Oil India's #CheerWithPride campaign

Cadbury Dairy Milk

Being a cricket-crazy nation, the sport is treated almost like a religion with people celebrating a victory like a festival and a loss with harshly worded slogans raised high, among other acts of disappointment. All of this is usually followed by those intense 9.00 pm prime-time debates about exactly what went right or wrong during the match.

Swiggy

Swiggy Match Day Mania!

Star India pitches its Value Pack through this campaign featuring none other than MS Dhoni & Indian cricket's new poster boy Hardik Pandya

A cricket tournament in this part of the world, be it the ICC World Cup or IPL, generates high viewership during the matches. Therefore, it's the perfect time of the year for the hottest consumer brands, across categories (from traditionally beverage and cola brands to online food delivery apps and online travel booking brands), to brainstorm about running their campaigns to aim for a mammoth reach and expansion of their consumer base.

Global music streaming app Spotify rolls out this campaign on TV and digital around the ongoing cricket World Cup with Bollywood on its playlist and starring actors Anil Kapoor and Ishaan Khattar as brand endorsers

#SabkoChabaJaenge, a digital-first campaign created by Dabur India to promote its Red Toothpaste prior to the India-Pakistan match grabbed headlines for all the wrong reasons

Uber's #WorldCupFanAnthem

The ICC World Cup, the biggest cricket tournament globally, can easily be seen as the Super Bowl of India. As the 50-day cricket extravaganza is drawing to a close, we pause to take a look at some of the brand commercials riding the cricket fever. Swiggy seems to be a prefered choice.

ALSO READ: Ahead of India-Pak game, Star Sports puns on 'baap baap hota hai' jibe in ad

We ask a few creative folks to pick and choose their favourite of the lot...

Titus Upputuru, Creative Head, Taproot Dentsu

Titus Upputuru

I quite like the Swiggy 'Old Friends' ad. Whether it is for a mobile phone or fashion brand or a sports channel, most ads show young men and possibly young women bonding before a TV set. What sets this ad apart is the fact that they have featured really old men watching the match. Often, as marketers and creative agencies, we want to show the target audience in our advertising. But it pays to go against the grain, as in this case. The reason Swiggy showed older people could also be to enlarge the audience and get the brand to engage with older people. Either way, it's a good ad.

Chetan Mane, VP - Business and Strategy, Whyness

Chetan Mane

The Spotify ad featuring Anil Kapoor is my favourite out of the current set running during the World Cup. I love the great acting and strong insight around varied music choices within a family. It very effectively communicates the proposition of 50 million tracks.

The next would definitely be the Swiggy ad where two old men are deciding what to order. The whole setting of these two old men ordering food to eat during a match is adorable. The conversation between them is extremely relatable and very real. All these factors, together, will definitely put a smile on your face every time you watch the ad. Given how adorable the setting is and the fact that such a setting hasn't been seen in an ad before, it definitely wins a lot of brownie points for the brand.