The UAE is home to a large population of Indian and Pakistani expats. These individuals have a passionate supporter culture for cricket. The Indian Premier League (IPL) is the most followed cricketing competition in the 20 over format. Mashreq wanted to reach & attract these mega fans to Mashreq retail banking products. But Mashreq didn’t have the budget to invest in a sponsorship of IPL. Instead, we decided to hijack the tournament and become a part of the conversation surrounding the IPL tournament. Our objective was to deliver online engagement and link Mashreq to the IPL in the minds of mega fans.

We made Mashreq the biggest fan of the IPL tournament in the UAE and created the #T20Hits campaign to engage with cricket lovers about the sport they love so much.

To genuinely connect with the cricket lovers in the UAE, Mashreq would have to become a fan of the IPL tournament too.

We initiated conversations around a passion-topic for a specific interest group: cricket fans. Once we connected with our target audience around their interest, we built parallels between their favourite sport and Mashreq banking products.

Our consistent visual style and language across social, digital and direct EDM seeded familiarity amongst our target audience and improved their willingness to engage with more transactional messages.

We instigated & leveraged cricket discussions on Mashreq social media platforms with the tag, #T20Hits. Our conversations built up hype ahead of each highly anticipated clash, celebrated match winning performances and invited debate about players, teams and match-ups. We posted on Mashreq’s Facebook page and Instagram Account with relevant hashtags to ensure we reach people who were watching the IPL.

We extended #T20Hits creative to digital banner executions that promoted specific Mashreq retail banking products using cricket terminology. Mega fans could click the banners to apply for products and continue their interaction with Mashreq. Banners were displayed on espncricinfo.com ; the top site for cricket lovers to visit during the IPL season.

Social Media Engagement:

• Reach: 1.6million

• Engagement: 640 000

• Engagement Rate: 40%

Display Banner Performance:

• Impressions: 38 million

• Clicks: 29 000

• Click through rate: 0.07%