Labourers by day, cricket stars by Sprite
There are about 250,000 labourers in the UAE, most of them from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. And despite their different backgrounds, they’ve got one thing in common. Cricket! For them —as many would already know— cricket is as big as football. A religion with their own pantheon. They just can’t get enough of it.
For a brand like Sprite, with a fraction of the budget of other brands, sponsoring the cricket was not an option. Yet they had to find a way into their hearts.
So they created the Sprite Cricket Stars, a parallel tournament modeled after the Cricket WorldCup which turned humble workers into Cricket stars, with trials, practices, stages and playoffs, all they way till the final match at Dubai International Stadium.
As the case study points out, the campaign generated no social media engagement at all. Instead, real emotional engagement with over 42,000 workers and their families.
