Here's how Fundamental and Lens Flare Films reintroduced adidas to Indian Cricket

Cricket is not just an emotion, but a religion in India. Period. Therefore, when adidas, which has mostly been associated with soccer across the globe, signed the new five-year deal with BCCI for becoming the Official Kit Sponsor of the Indian Cricket Team, it was perceived as a huge leap of faith.

The story of adidas’ (quite literal) hand-in-glove connection with soccer dates back to the times when the founder Adi Dassler created one of the most iconic pairs of all time “Samba” i, a classic three-striped soccer cleat with a gum sole design, in 1949, prior to the FIFA World Cup in Brazil. Not to forget the brand’s association with Cristiano Ronaldo which came in the aftermath of the brand sponsoring Juventus’ kit. 

In 1995, adidas was given a choice between associating with the Indian Cricket team as the jersey sponsor and Sachin Tendulkar, the god of Indian Cricket. Back then, the brand decided to opt for a similar deal with him that Nike did with Michael Jordan, and cut to 2009, the once iconic MRF-Genius bat of the Master Blaster was replaced with that of adidas.

It was clear that this time the brand would leave no stone unturned to make a big show out of the announcement to mark its re-entry into the Indian cricket arena. 

For this, the brand has come up with two ad films- one for the announcer and the other for the jersey drop, which were conceptualised by Fundamental along with Lens Flare Films on the production helm.

The deal announcer film-

The Jersey Launch film-

Neeraj Kanitkar

As per Neeraj Kanitkar, Co-Founder and Executive Creative Director, Fundamental, because adidas was associated with cricket (through cricketers) and wasn’t (through the team) at the same time, it was important to make a big splash and that’s precisely the reason why his team dug into the moments in Indian Cricket history and picked up all the moments wherein India, very unexpectedly managed to achieve greater heights and epitomised the spirit of “Impossible is Nothing!”

Pallavi Chakravarti

“Even though the world saw two distinct pieces, we were very clear in our heads that there had to be a unique brand thread running through. Yes, it's a big deal for the brand to have won the sponsorship rights, but what is imperial from a communication perspective is to make adidas own the moment, as enough can be done around cricket, which may or may not belong to any brand, because its a topic which is universal and apparently something that everyone has an opinion about,” Pallavi Chakravarti, Co-founder and CCO, added.

From a script perspective, Kanitkar pointed out the age-old saying in the advertising galore- “Give me the freedom of a tight brief!” gained all the more prominence, in this case with “Give me the freedom of a tight production!”

“The limitations of having cricketers for a short span of time and at the place of their choosing even sharpened the scripting work because we exactly knew what each of them was supposed to do and pre-decide everything from the time duration of each line to the dialogues,” he added.

Sachin Kotre

Delving deeper into the combination of both- monochromatic and vibrant colours in the background of the jersey drop film, Sachin Kotre, Advertising Films Director and Co-founder, Lens Flare Films, emphasised that because of the stature that the jersey holds at any given point in time and needs to really stand out throughout, the idea was to ensure that the viewer has a sense of a “blue blur passing through the entire film” even when viewed in fast forward and hence everything was chosen to be depicted in a monochrome background so that the blue colour really stands out.

“With the background graphics, I didn’t want to use the mundane walls or halls for the background, I decided to go with the LED screens even though it takes time, effort and money because when set up, the colours emitting from an LED light on a wall is very different from what a painted wall looks like and there’s a certain dis-chromatic feel to it. Also, because it is adidas, we went ahead with using horizontal stripes in the background as the design element,” he added.

The intent was to understand the limitations well and glean into it which is why they decided to showcase the cricketers living in another world and the fans in the other through the background setups.

Commenting on how the agency went about the selection of featuring certain cricketers in the ad film and building on the notion of “Impossible to explain, Impossible is Nothing!”, Chakravarti stated that it was a more-the-merrier situation because, from an idea lens, the ad film was conceptualised keeping in mind that the cricketer piece and a fan piece is in equal measure around what does the “jersey” mean to a fan or a regular cricket crazy Indian or even the player himself or herself.

“The jersey is an embodiment of a feeling that each one of us has already about the sport in whatever degree as some of us are less crazy about it than others but there are some who live and breathe it! I really don’t think there’s anybody who is untouched or divorced from an emotion that cricket brings, along with it- a wave of happiness for a win or the long faces for a low,” she said.

Sharing her view on the creative brief that Team Fundamental received for the project work from adidas, the CCO stated that it was one of the very rare briefs wherein the brand announced its intention of making a splash and there’s an instinctive agreement, right from the very first meeting, which in itself points out to the matching wavelength between the brand and the agency as a team.

“If you look at all the previous work around the Indian Cricket Team’s jersey, it was always about the sport. However, the adidas’ campaign is squarely hitting on the individual feelings that the jersey evokes in people,” Kanitkar stated.

He also went on to add that while India doesn’t have a jersey culture, in comparison to the rest of the world, it is being built slowly and the “Own Your Stripes” campaign in a way is an “opening gauntlet” for the same.

In Kotre’s opinion, since a lot of the sports films have been shot in the northern parts of the country, making cricket reflective of the same, therefore it was important to have textures of Bombay in the backdrop which was more often showcased in the sports films in the 90s.

Touching upon what all will form a part of the various touchpoints for “Own your stripes”, she elaborated that there will be a slew of creatives or “shoulder content”, in a light-hearted vein, that will be coming out soon on digital platforms, print, in-store and OOH amongst other mediums, in terms of the cricketers interacting with the jersey, the unboxing of the jersey and the kinds of reaction that it evokes. 

Elucidating on the challenges faced with regards to the particular campaign, Team Fundamental explained that since there was shooting happening on all three fronts- stills, shoulder content and the master film simultaneously, with both cricketers and fans on the same day, of which there were only one hour blocked for each cricketer, it almost felt like a “military-level operation” which required the client and agency to split into tiny units to pull it off and ensure that the images of the jersey weren’t clicked or at worse leaked on the web.

Upon being questioned as to where the idea of creating a fusion between modern and classical musical instruments coupled with the voiceover for the brand film was incepted, Kotre replied that owing to his personal penchant for Sitar, amongst other musical gizmos, and the way the script was written rhythmically, he at once knew that sitar would go beautifully with the film. 

“The original idea was to have an electro feel and introduce Sitar in certain sections to raise it up, but then we decided to use it through and through in many versions- lower and higher scale, both, leading to a larger-than-life scale up at the end of the film,” he said.

With this, he also went on to add that moving forward in the advertising world, the second units will become a larger and bigger part of the shooting process because 70-80% of the films today have celebrities and therefore the shoots are mainly centred around them and are planned as per their schedule and availability.

“There was an almost 70:30 ratio in the film production between us and the B-crew unit, unlike yesteryears where they were traditionally used for plates,” he said.

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