EMVIEs 2014: Refreshingly Sporty

Mindshare's case study on Star Sports Refresh brings sports to the forefront of news.

The only shortlist in the Best Integrated Campaign - Media, was Mindshare's Star Sports Refresh. The campaign was designed to signal the channel rebranding done by Star Sports.

India's largest sports broadcasters wanted to create a sports revolution of sorts. They realised that to positively influence sports in India, they would need to have a multi-sports approach. According to Mindshare, cricket has been glorified enough. So Star Sports rebranded itself, dropping the term 'cricket' completely from its logo. The Star bouquet of sports channels were now going to be called Star Sports 1, 2 , 3, 4 and Star Sports HD 1, 2, 3.

Looking at India's sports report card, Mindshare realized that while 2012 was India's best performance in the Olympics, the country still ranked a dismal 55th out of the 79 countries which took part. This was behind even Trinidad & Tobago and North Korea. The reason for this is the mindset in India that sports is a waste of time and will not let you grow later. They researched and found out that sports were neglected because there was a hierarchy in information dissemination. In all the newspapers, sports were covered in the back few pages, in news bulletin it was addressed only at the end.

Mindshare went to top media houses like the Times Group and Hindu. On the day of the rebranding, the newspapers were brought out in a new avatar. For the first time in the 300 years history of Indian newspapers, the current day's sports news replaced the page 1 of these newspapers. In news bulletins and news portals, sports were the No 1 topic.

The media idea soon became a campaign idea. And from there, it has now been converted into a brand strategy for the broadcaster for the entire decade.