 "'Make Every Yard Count', Nike's crowdsourced digital ad tells cricketers")
To say that ‘cricket is a religion in India’ is the most hackneyed understatement of our time. India doesn’t just ‘worship’ cricket, it plays it, watches it, gets down and dirty with it. It is a fervour that has gripped the country for decades now; it is a fervour that won’t die for many more decades to come.
It is this fervour that Nike has leveraged for its new crowdsourced digital campaign ‘Make Every Yard Count’. For some time now, Nike has been asking users to send them photographs of their best moments of playing cricket - whether in a maidan, in a gully, on a terrace, in the street - anywhere. The brand put together all these videos of young, aspiring cricketers and saluted their drive to be the best. No wonder who, how old and what level they play at, what matters is how make each yard of 22, count.
Speaking about the film, Avinash Pant, Marketing Director, Nike India said, “At Nike, we understand that the cricket culture of this nation is not confined to Team India and its players. It includes the millions of young cricketers who strive every day to be amongst the best tomorrow. This film is a dedication to each and every one of those young cricketers who relentlessly chase their dreams.”
The ‘Parallel Journeys’ film is a stop-motion video featuring over 1000 photos of boys playing cricket. The video first debuted on Nike Cricket’s Facebook page and will subsequently release on YouTube, nikecricket.in and various other cricket media channels.
Watch the video here:
Speaking about how the campaign came together, Senthil Kumar, National Creative Director, JWT India said, “One action split across 1440 cricket crazy athletes, images and locations across India. Add to that, a thousand plus split-second images that co-create one cricket-crazy action across the country, seamlessly.”
He added, “The image bank of 225000 images of Cricket Crazy India is completely outsourced whether it’s online or on-ground. People sent us images via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more.”
When asked how the on-ground crowdsourcing of images happened, “Kumar said, “We had over 100 photographers across 1000 playgrounds spread out over the country. Each sent out or posted prefixed key frames of a bowler, batsman and fielder’s actions. These were put together to make the film that you now online.”
Apart from digital, Nike India will also use print as a touch-point for this campaign.