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Why it is my best campaign
The Nike Bleed Blue campaign has lasted for two years now and is set to go on till the next World Cup in 2015, where Team India has to Bleed Blue as defending world champions. This is my best work as I played various roles to ensure that the campaign captured the passion and the imagination of the entire nation. I was the writer, national creative director, photographer, designer and even film-maker at various stages of this campaign.
Client's brief to the agency
The brief was to launch the Nike Team India blue jersey as the uniform of the nation and deepen Nike's relationship with the sport and its patrons across the streets and stadiums of India.
Routes considered and chosen
There were several diamonds in the rough when it came to expressing the national passion for the team but when we arrived at 'Blood, Sweat & Blue' as the attitude and 'Bleed Blue' as the expression, everyone started to rally around them. The whole team at Nike India, in fact, decided that there should be no other option.
Reason
Team Nike firmly believed that if there was one obsession that captured the spirit of an entire nation drenched in a million emotions and that united every Indian, it was cricket.
For the Onwards to Bleed Blue, which was the 2012 version of Bleed Blue, it was important to build on the phenomenal success of the previous campaign and create something that would leap further and embed brand Nike into the collective consciousness of the country, at the same time we had to ensure that the 'Blood Sweat & Blue' remained at the heart of the campaign.
The '2012 Nike Bleed Blue Parallel Journeys' campaign is a commentary on the parallel journeys of India's bloodline, which is not just the 15 players on the bench but a billion strong. It had to bring alive the truth that cricket runs deep in the blood of the country's youth. The idea was born from the insight that at any point in time, on any given day, the journeys of the current world champions of the game ran parallel to the journeys of millions of cricket crazy youth across the country. The execution of the campaign is such that it celebrates the common thread between these parallel journeys, capturing the pursuit of greatness in the many parallel worlds of India's cricket crazy population.
When the parallel lines blur across the country, we realise that everyone is pursuing the same dream. Nike believes that everybody is an athlete but the authentic expression of this belief in our case had to be through the everyday guy who lives, breathes and plays the game with the same intensity as athletes at the highest level.
This quest demanded that we travel across the country to find athletes from schools, universities, clubs, colonies, communities - from all over India - to ensure that every individual journey captured in this film was authentic and real.
Result
The campaign united the nation behind the national team, inspiring many cricket crazy Indians to wear the Nike jersey. The campaign generated over 2.3 million fans on Facebook and over 10 millions views online.
The Bleed Blue campaign was unanimously voted as the No.1 campaign of the 2011 World Cup by thousands of blogs, national newspapers and TV channels. Nike blue jerseys were completely sold out on India match days, with an overall 98 per cent of the production sold during the campaign period.
'India Bleeds Blue' was the most popular headline across various news reports, athlete interviews, expert commentary and online profiles after the World Cup win. The 2012 Nike Parallel Journeys: Bleed Blue film was voted the best film of the T20 World Cup. The Parallel Journeys film has over 10 million results online and is featured on numerous blogs and advertising sites among the world's best examples of sports advertising.
Will it work today?
The Nike Bleed Blue Campaign has lasted for two years now, generating thousands of new fans and many conversations every day.
Senthil Kumar
National creative director, JWT India
