With the start of the Cricket World Cup, a large number of brands have begun using cricket messaging to advertise on Twitter. Starting with the India-Pakistan game, presented here is a list of top advertisers who have used Twitter as a platform. Using an aggregate of Re-Tweets, Favourites and Replies, a Twitter Brand Index has been created to acknowledge the top 5 brands from over 50 brands that advertised with the micro-blogging site on a day where the#INDvPAK match saw 1.7 million Tweets and over 118 million impressions.
1. @NikeCricket: A part of the #BleedBlue campaign – Nike has created this chant (#BleedBlue) which has been rallying supporters of the Indian cricket team for over two world cups now. This has become the war cry of the Indian fan and this world cup Nike is sharing #BleedBlue stories of fan and celebrities alike. Nike is also the sponsor of the Indian Team Jersey. As a part of the #BleedBlue campaign they have also sent out personalized jerseys to sports stars, celebrities and other members of the sports fraternity so that they can #BleedBlue in the true colours of the team.The most retweeted tweet on match day was that of Roger Federer unpacking his Jersey.
2. @StarSportsIndia: Star Sports owns the broadcasting rights to the ICC Cricket world cup and are also sponsors of the Indian Team jersey. They started with the campaign #WontGiveItBack given India are the reigning champion of the cup and before game day asked people to vote on the outcome of the game. They also ran a promotion asking people to write back to them with something funny about the #IndVsPak game and winners would be sent Team Jerseys.
3. @KitKatIndia: @KitKatIndia ran the campaign #SlowIsBetter around the new KitKat Senses chocolate. The products is made over 12 hours with slow churned chocolate for a Rich Smooth Taste. @KitKatIndia was able to find a creative way to integrate this story into the larger Cricket narrative by asking people to guess the slowest ball to take a wicket during the #IndVsPak match to win e-shopping vouchers.
4. @ClubMahindra: @ClubMahindra was able to find creative ways to integrate stories from their resorts into the game on Sunday. They put the Mandala from their logo to great use with tweets around the toss, when Virat Kohli was hitting 4’s and 6’s and when he hit his 100. When there was a great catch on the pitch they were ready with a tweet that showed someone catching a fish at one of their resorts and drew parallels of what a great catch looked like at @ClubMahindra. The finally ended the day with a picture of a cake that their chefs had baked for the team at one of their resorts.
5. @AxisBank: @AxisBank went after cricketing rituals when they asked fans to tag a friend who has a unique way of cheering for India. The hashtag used was #SuperFanRitual.
By: Syed Fakhar Imam