Airtel leveraged its sponsorship of the Champions League T20 cricket tournament in India to engage fans on YouTube. It held a contest asking fans to make and upload cheering videos for their favorite teams, with the top 10 most viewed videos winning a trip to the tournament finals in South Africa. The campaign was a success, receiving over 2,500 video submissions and making the Airtel YouTube channel the most subscribed in India that month. It established Airtel as supporting fans' passion and talent while generating engagement through social media.

1. CASE STUDY ON
By Jalaluddin Khan

2. OBJECTIVE
To leverage brand Airtel’s association with Champions
League T20 they used the popular social platform Youtube to
engage and interact with the Target Audience in their natural
online habitats during the ACL T20, 2010.

3. TARGET AUDIENCE
India being a billion-strong cricket-crazy nation, they had to
deal with a vast and un-exhaustive target audience.

4. STRATEGY
The idea behind the contest was to provide a platform to the
millions of cricket fans in India to showcase their enthusiasm for
the teams and sport, in general, during the ACL T20 happening in
South Africa. And what better platform than YouTube- the most
active video sharing networking site with 300,000 odd users in
India, could have been chosen to run this contest.
The confluence of cricket and YouTube, for the first time in India,
was bound to spell success for the contest.

5. SOLUTION/ CREATIVE IDEA
The idea was simple: Upload a video, make it go viral and stand a chance to catch
the ACLT20 final live in South Africa.
The initiative invited real, passionate fans to make cheering videos for their
favorite team and upload them on the ACL T20 YouTube channel. It gave fans the
platform to showcase their creativity, their talent, their passion, and their madness
for the game.
The criterion for awarding the prizes was based on the number of views a video
received over the duration of the contest. And the top 10 video owners with
maximum views were flown to South Africa, with their partners, to cheer for their
teams live at the venue!
The buzz also translated into other social shores, with fans sharing video links on
Facebook and Twitter. The contest picked up maximum viral mileage with fans
spreading the word through word-of-mouth and other mediums, with hundreds
participating and many more voting for their friends/peers to win. The whole social
arena was abuzz with the excitement surrounding the ACL T20 YouTube Contest.

6. RESULT & RECOGNITION
The ACL T20 Real Fans campaign set many benchmarks since its
launch. Starting off as India’s 1st YouTube contest page, it became
the Most Subscribed channel (all time & the month of September)
with 500,000+ channel views in the first 30 days.
The level of interaction the brand had with its consumers and the
response thus generated can be seen in the massive number of video
submissions we received- over 2500 video submissions. The
campaign was successful in giving fans one thing they love the
most: a platform to express their love, passion and cheer for their
teams. It also effectively established Airtel as an enabler of talent and
amplifier of passion for the youth in this country.
The campaign won the Best Social Media Campaign award in the
telecommunication category at the IAC 2011 awards.