About Royal Challenge Sports Drink
It is a surrogate product of Royal Challenge whisky, one of the largest selling premium whisky brands of India, manufactured by United Spirits Ltd. Royal Challenge was originally manufactured by Shaw Wallace and launched in India in the early 1980s. In March 2000, Shaw Wallace re-launched the brand with new packaging and advertising. Shaw Wallace was acquired by USL in 2005 and Royal Challenge became an official brand of USL.
USL is headquartered in Bengaluru and is a subsidiary of Diageo plc. It has a mission of becoming the best performing, most trusted and respected consumer goods company in India. The company has 18 brands in its portfolio that sell more than a million cases each year, of which 4 brands each sell more than 10 million cases annually
Business Objectives
Royal Challenge’s brand purpose is ‘To inspire the spirit of taking on life’ and it imbibes the motto of ‘Live Bold’. With the shift in the thinking of the India’s new generation the company had realigned its brand positioning. The new positioning has replaced ‘why’ with ‘why not?’ embracing dynamism instead of predictability.
The objective of the campaign was to connect the youth of this cricket frenzy nation with the message of “PlayBold”. Subroto Geed the Senior VP –Marketing, United Spirits, said, “Through this anthem, Royal Challenge Sports Drink is attempting to galvanize the Indian youth to follow their heart and make bold choices. We hope that the anthem’s catchphrase “Mere India, Tu PlayBold”, becomes a single sound that does not just reflect our country’s love for cricket, but goes on to become the youth anthem for India.”
Strategy Adopted
Cricket World Cup in India is the biggest platform for the brands to connect with millions of customers but for a liquor brand, how do you advertise? Surrogate marketing!
Owing to the industry regulations to Royal Challenge created a surrogate product Royal Challenge sports drink to advertise during the ICC World T20. Keeping in mind the new brand positioning and using this surrogate marketing they rolled out a fan anthem called PlayBold which captured passion and emotions of the young Indians for the cricket team. To build momentum for the world cup the campaign was launched as a TVC around 10 days before the start of the tournament.
The video has Virat Kohli who is hailed as one of the biggest youth icons of the country and MS Dhoni known for taking unorthodox decisions on the field. Both the stars are shown flexing their muscles, gearing up for the world cup along with the young fans dancing and singing the anthem to encourage them. The video echoes the passion and devotion of millions of youths for whom cricket is a religion.
Results Achieved
The campaign #PlayBold was an instant hit among the people this country and became the first viral cricket campaigns of the ICC T2o world cup. The video was shared across platforms and managed to get more than 2.3 million views on Youtube and 1.5 million views on Facebook. The brand trended on Twitter for more than 6 hours on the day of the launch of the campaign.
As per the company website the new brand positioning has found a strong acceptance among the customers and the brand is witnessing a robust growth in the country. The brand has also extended their campaign for the IPL T-20 and is associated with the team they own, Royal Challengers Bangalore.
Learnings
It is never easy for a brand to convey the right message when it cannot advertise directly due to industry regulations. What we see here is a perfect example of how brand managers and the agencies put in efforts to launch an impeccable campaign. The objective was clear, how to convey the new brand positioning and define a long-term strategy. The timing of the campaign was impeccable, what bigger than the ICC World T20 cup? The brand connected with millions of youth with one simple message – listen to your heart, PlayBold.
The entire campaign was a well thought through campaign, they used the most popular youth icons, MSD and Virat Kohli. The brand leveraged the personas of both these stars in a great way. Dhoni know for this unconventional field settings and decisions has always managed to surprise the cricket fraternity and the fans while Kohli has been a consistent performer with his aggressive style of batting.
The decision to cast Virat Kohli in the campaign was two fold; apart from the world cup campaign he is also the captain for Royal Challengers Bangalore. Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) is also using the #PlayBold theme during the IPL to connect and engage with their fans. RCB is already witnessing a good traction on the social media platform by using the same hashtag. The tag has already been liked for more than 750 times and experiencing re-tweets.
Image Credits: icct20worldcup2016live
