Brands on Toes- #WC2018 Campaigns!

World Cup 2018 finally ended with exquisite team performance, courage, resilience and sad ending for Croatia. The under dogs joining the finals already won the hearts of the world. They showed true team spirit and proved that one doesn't require only star performers to go ahead and succeed but its team spirit, leadership and collective effort which helps you reach the horizons. The world cup surely gave a lot of lessons to us corporates as well.

The Croatian Fairy tale ended yet won hearts of all

Though Pakistan couldn't qualify and participate in the world cup still the beautiful game with its charm had eye balls of Pakistanis stuck on the sports channels. Be it post or pre-match hype, football match analysis was part of discussions among students and professionals. Football fever was just around everywhere. Thinking on the notes, Pakistani brands actively came up with campaigns pertaining to the world cup 2018 which was a positive sign.

In the world full of clutter where brands are active in bombarding and trying to catch the impressions of TG, world cup 2018 was a forum where brands could get automatic engagement with target audience. Below are some creative executions which caught my attention and for which I would like to write about.

The Coca-Cola Anthem #WC2018

Coca-Cola partnered with Jason Derulo and came up with the official anthem. Multiple adapts of anthem were made in collaboration with local stars of various countries being an international campaign. Coke Studio having strong association in Pakistan did a good move by getting QB on board for the Pakistani version "chak dey phaddey". The brand played on established equity and fame of Coke Studio hence forth the content was relevant. A part of the Pakistani version video was shot in Pakistan and it featured Pakistani super stars along with QB who was the lead singer. As part of the campaign the world cup trophy tour was organized by Coca-cola and Pakistan was among those 51 countries. The overall campaign created pre hype of the world cup and created a sort of festivity around the world. FIFA's fictional Alex Hunter was made Coke's first virtual brand ambassador as well.

#DhakDhakGoal

Out of all other local brands EBM came up with a very energetic and catchy song. The campaign was live on Digital, ATL, Radio and OOH. The hashtag was taken to international level to Russia with digital amplification.

But wait with all this heavy budget spent on long duration copy I think a lot more could have been done as part of the campaign. Moreover, I feel association of the brand with sports seemed missing as Chocolicious has never claimed or positioned itself to be a biscuit that stands along the lines of Gluco or Tiger. These brands have established their persona as of energetic biscuit which offer instant energy. I believe other activities within the budget should be carried out to engage with the audience as JAZZ did in their Rising Stars campaign of PSL. Most importantly as for the brand positioning of Chocolicious in my opinion the brand never stood in line of energetic biscuits like Gluco or Tiger, so this triggers that the brand is in phase of changing its positioning with the launch of campaign or whats to explore wider target audience. I do feel that on ground activation must have been done by the brand to build on to to the great idea. Something at smaller scale like school events of football or local Footbal tournaments just as KE and Telenor did earlier in Liyari.

KE Ujala Football Tournament

Talking about the hashtag of the campaign #DhakDhakGoal gave a very youthful and energetic feel but the other one "#YehHaiMeriGame" should have been "Mera Game" instead of "Meri Game" because game is always Mera when it comes to Game :)

Cutting short, kudos to the team for coming up with a very good song and video with local stars. The creative billboards added onto flavor of campaign but I think a lot more should have been done to integrate the brand with instant energy, sporty or some relation that could have guided to buying behavior with Chocolicious. In the coming days activations can be done to give endless ripples to the excellent communication by the brand and make strong association with sports also.

To sum it up, its great to see brands staying active in foreseeing the trends to engage with target audience. Brands which capitalize on such events with local interest get ahead of the game by making themselves stand out among the tough competition.