Mumbai Indians launches digital campaign to retire Jersey No. 10

The reason for choosing the jersey as the main theme for the campaign was the fact that it is only used by Sachin Tendulkar.

Sachin Tendulkar's retirement from ODIs was an emotional moment for Indian cricket fans. After the news of his retirement broke on December 23, Tendulkar's IPL team, Mumbai Indians, launched a digital campaign to 'retire' his jersey. The campaign, titled '#RetireTheJerseyNo10', aims to honour Tendulkar and ensure that no other cricketer is associated with the jersey number.

Digital media agency Red Digital has executed the campaign.

Yashraj Vakil, chief executive officer, Red Digital Media, says, "Mumbai Indians wanted to do something unique to pay tribute to the Master Blaster as he also represents the IPL team. Within half an hour of Sachin's retirement news, we came up with a campaign where we asked people to vote on whether his jersey, numbered 10, should retire."

Vakil adds that retiring a jersey is a very common thing in football and baseball in foreign countries. Federations announce the retirement of a particular jersey in order to honour the player who wore it during his successful career.

This is a claimed first in India. Mumbai Indians' campaign now includes an official petition to the cricket board to retire jersey No. 10 to ensure that it remains associated with Tendulkar forever. As a part of the campaign, each Like on the Facebook page of the petition will be considered a vote.

The agency claims that within a few hours of its launch, the hash-tag '#RetireTheJerseyNo10' trended nationally and continued to do so for three straight days.

The activity saw over 12,000 tweets in a span of three days. The way the agency says it, every 50 tweets with #RetireTheJerseyNo10 helped the Mumbai Indians reach over 87,500 people, creating more than 36 million impressions. Several quizzes were also organised around the Master Blaster to promote conversations.

On Facebook, the campaign was posted on Mumbai Indians' official fan page and received an immense response. The agency highlighted Tendulkar's amazing 23-year career and asked fans to join the initiative on Twitter.

The activity resulted in more than 28,000 Shares, 1,75,000 Likes and over 10,500 comments in the first three days. The engaged users stood at 2.5 lakh and are still increasing . According ot the agency, the campaign has already reached 2.2 million people and has generated over 7.7 million views.

Red Digital had started working on the campaign three-four weeks before Sachin's retirement as the rumours of his step were looming large in media circles. Mumbai Indians now plans to extend this campaign till the IPL and the digital agency will come up with other ideasto keep the momentum going.

Vakil says, "The campaign has been fully viral and we have not taken any advertising support from either Twitter or Facebook to promote it. It is the love of the people for Sachin that has made this successful."

Red Digital, a Mumbai-based social media agency, began operations in 2010.

Mumbai Indians, founded in 2008, is a franchise team of IPL. It is one of the eight founding teams of the IPL that has already completed five seasons.