Inspiring a billion imaginations, the Star Sports network is home to a number of leading domestic and international sports with seventeen channels broadcasting premier sporting events. A part of the Disney network, Star Sports has been uniting sports lovers across the nation, creating a feeling of belonging among a larger audience cheering for their favorite team. Star Sports has fostered a culture that encourages viewer participation in sports and has a distinct viewer base for various sports, be it a popular sport such as Cricket or an emerging sport such as Kabaddi; the network never misses to catch the eyeballs of the audience.
"As Cricket returned in its purest form on the most-loved Sports network in India, Star Sports aimed to keep the interest high for the test series where India took on South Africa (SA) in the Rainbow Nation. Hence, we needed to provide an extraordinary solution that could drive strong viewership across India. In partnership with Mindshare, we perfectly captured the essence of the brand’s objective and delivered a pitch-perfect experience of 'prominent firsts' for Cricket lovers."
To understand the various motivations that drive Indians to watch Cricket, the brand leveraged InMobi Audiences and identified the many avatars of the Cricket-loving audiences in India. Through the platform, Star Sports understood that Cricket lovers in India are predominantly Gen Z, millennials, and working professionals who love using Cricket and sports apps. Deploying location polygons around their places of interest, such as play arenas, stadiums, tech parks, and colleges, the brand could sync their real and virtual world behavior.
An experience revealing the many 'firsts' India has recorded overseas against strong cricketing nations can invoke the passion of cricket lovers across the country. However, to make this a memorable and immersive experience, the brand needed an agile, scalable, and intelligent integration that showcased different locations on the world map and the personalized highlights against each location. By intricately capturing interesting landmark wins on a full-screen interstitial, Star Sports gave a holistic view of the world map. The first card sends out an interesting message 'Experience Team India's first test series wins overseas,' followed by the CTA' Experience Now.'
Once the user clicks on the CTA, they can see the instruction snippet followed by the CTA' Close.' The snippet instructs the users to swipe on the screen to scroll to the next region and tap on the pins to see and listen to India's first win overseas. Powered by the advanced motion and voice technology, the interstitial depicts the inspiring details of the first wins across England, Pakistan, Australia, and the West Indies. The world map contains a landmark win for SA as well, where they play the video from the campaign #FreedomSeries featuring Ravi Shastri. Viewers who click on the CTA' Next' see the match schedule of the series that promises nerve-wracking Cricketing action. The final CTA 'Learn More' redirects the ad viewer to the Star Sports #FreedomSeries video campaign on their YouTube channel.
While the detailing of the Cricketing experience left the ad viewers spellbound, the results resounded the success of the campaign.
