Background & Context

Airtel, India’s telecom pioneer, wanted to regain the ground it had lost to Jio in the 4G era. The way to do so was to show off technological capabilities and be associated with future-readiness in the consumer’s mind.

The next big battle in India's telecom space was going to take place on the 5G front. While 5G was yet to be launched in India, Jio was already leading in consideration based on existing perceptions.

Airtel needed to change this landscape.

Creative Challenge

While our aim was to link Airtel with future readiness using 5G, we had to do it in a way that would have mass appeal. Our target audience was the entire nation that is composed of tech-wary and tech-positive individuals with varying degrees of comfort with technology.

To create relevance for 5G among not just a singular cohort but the entire country, we tried to gauge the dominant sentiment around it. And found that 5G was perceived as a distant technology - invisible, cold and scary - that drove people away from it.

The challenge for Airtel was doubly difficult: build credibility for a nascent technology and make it relevant to people's lives now.

Solution

Using the ‘past’ to create a relatable bridge to the ‘future’

The technology of the future becomes meaningful if it helps bring past glory alive. And in order to make a futuristic technology like 5G seem meaningful and relevant, we connected it to our shared cultural past; leveraging India’s most potent passion point - Cricket

Airtel Revives Cricket's Holy Grail with 5G

In cricketing folk lore, there is one moment, which catapulted cricket from a mere sport to being a religion – Kapil Dev’s iconic 175* in 1983 world cup but this moment was lost to a British broadcaster’s strike and hence it’s significance was lost; denying Indians a shared moment of pride and celebration.

We decided to bring this lost piece of history to life, so our audience can experience something they always wished they had and relive that proud moment again.

Execution

Taking 9 months to come to fruition the process we followed was:

i. Mapping the iconic moment using Kapil Dev’s memories and of his teammates and a few others who were present there.

ii. Partnering with the 7-time Oscar winning Double Negative for VFX to aid us in reconstructing the innings.

iii. Recreating the past with 5G, replicating the exact match atmosphere – the stadium, the people in it and a de-aged Kapil Dev to make him look like he did in 1983.

iv. The Big 5G launch event where Kapil Dev’s innings was shown to >50 top influencers on 5G enabled smartphones in a special event. Later, a hologram of Kapil Dev enabled by 5G was unveiled through which he interacted with them in real time and walked them through the innings himself.

v. Moving the nation

We leveraged an equal mix of TV, digital and advocacy to spread the moment far and wide.