According to an HLL spokesperson, the company's main objective was to develop a long-term salience for the brand during the World Cup. ``Our brand is targeted at the youth segment. And youngsters just love cricket. With our campaigns and contests, we have gained salience during the event.'' HLL had kicked off the media blitz for the event as far back as on March 2, 1999. The FMCG major had launched ``The Close-Up -- Zaroorat Sabhi Ki'' contest from the first week of March '99. ``The contest closed by the end of April.We received over 15,000 entries from across the nation. Having used Ajay Jadeja in our earlier ads, we wanted to take the idea beyond celebrities and into the lives of ordinary people,'' says Martis.

So, the company launched a series of six films to announce the contest. In the television commercials, the agency chose six different situations with Ajay Jadeja coming in as a common factor in each. Jadeja was brought in as the contest anchor and asked viewers to write in to him about: why you require Close-Up confidence?

The first prize was a free trip to the World Cup final and the other prizes included 100 Ray-ban sunglasses and 10 Sony discman. It was last week that the agency announced the three lucky winners, who were packed off to watch the World Cup finals: Sanjay Punjabi, Sanjay Kumar and NK Venkatrangan. The company made a splash to announce the results.

In addition to the contest, HLL had kicked off a multi-media advertising campaign from May 14, 1999. The media blitz included print campaigns,TVCs, out-door campaigns and match reports. According to Ajit Martis, the objective was to capitalise on the World Cup fever and communicate the brand message: `Everybody needs Close-Up.' ``With our campaigns and contests, we generated a lot of excitement during the event,'' says Martis.

In the press ads, the agency had used cricket terms to communicate the brand message. The ads took off on cricket with taglines like ``Play a taste match every morning. Day and night confidence with Close-Up.'' As for the media plans, the agency had released the ads in all the cricket supplements that hit the media during the season. ``For out-door media, we had adopted the press ads to hoarding size. In Mumbai, we had booked 40 principal sites to display the hoardings,'' explains Marits. That should have certainly brought the HLL brand closer to the consumer's attention.