MidasNext Manages First Edition of Wonder Cement Saath: 7 Cricket Mahotsav

by  EVENTFAQS Bureau Entertainment | January 28, 2016 | News

MidasNext

Wonder Cement Ltd announced the launch of Wonder Cement Saath: 7 Cricket Mahotsav. The first edition of the tournament that witnessed participation from 39,840 cricket enthusiasts across 249 tehsils in Rajasthan, is pegged to be a large sports centric citizen engagement initiative. The entire tournament was managed by MidasNext. Former Indian captain Kapil Dev was enrolled by the agency to flag off the initiative along with Vivek Patni, Director, Wonder Cement at a glittering ceremony held in Jaipur on Nov 3. The tournament concluded on Jan 17 at Delhi Public School grounds in Udaipur.

Chief guests in attendance included Gulab Chand Kataria, Home Minister, Rajasthan and Dilip Vengsarkar, Former Indian Cricket Team Skipper and Chief Selector.

Commenting on his association with the tournament, Kapil Dev said, “I’m delighted to be a part of Wonder Cement Saath: 7 Cricket Mahotsav. This is a wonderful platform to identify budding talent from within the state. I am happy that the game has corporates like Wonder Cement who are committed to encourage budding talent in sports.”

The Saath:7 Cricket Mahotsav is a seven-over an inning, seven players per team, tennis-ball cricket tournament. Each team comprises of ten members. Having a woman player in the playing 7 of the 10 member team attracts a 7-run bonus for that team.  The tournament covered every district, tehsil and village of Rajasthan. The tournament also looked to identify cricketing talent from within the state for further training at Wonder Cricket Academy, the company’s sports training initiative while making the Wonder Cement brand name a household name in Rajasthan.

Speaking about the initiative, Tarun Chauhan, Management Advisor, Wonder Cement Ltd. said, “We believe that through this activity we will be able to provide a platform to the state’s talented young players to showcase their talent, get identified at the grassroots level and groomed to go on to play bigger league games in the future. Wonder Cement has always believed in promoting sports and has always been closely associated with cricket.”

Following the press conference on Nov 3 which saw Kapil Dev present, team registrations and roadshows took place simultaneously in 248 tehsils from Nov 24 to Dec 7. This was followed by 249 simultaneously conducted tehsil level cricket matches, 33 district level matches, 6 zonal level matches, and finally the tournament finals.

On associating with Wonder Cement for this event, Deepak Pawar, Managing Director, MidasNext Media said, “It has been a unique experience from the marketing team at Wonder Cement and us in taking the brand name to the length and breadth of the state and make it a household name. Riding on cricket to engage the consumer at the grass-roots level is new to rural marketing in India and we believe we have met the objective here.”

For the entire campaign, a ‘War Room’ was set up at Udaipur with 20 heads that were segregated into teams comprising of Campaign Hotline Management, Campaign Dealers Management, Trade Information Resource, Participant Relationship Officers, Permissions and Liaisons, Data Management, and MIS headed by a Campaign Manager and his team – with support functions including Communication Strategy, Creative Services and Logistics Management. These teams powered 249 tehsil level promotion teams comprising of 11 members in each of these locations. Excluding those from the brand and partner teams, about 5,300 different individuals came together on-ground at various points of this campaign to deliver a Citizen Engagement Experience using a new format of cricket.

OOH locations around the state encouraged players to band together and enroll for the event. Radio promotions led by RJs included contests. Further, road shows were rolled out simultaneously across 249 tehsils of Rajasthan. Promotion crews converged at market places, colleges, bus terminals, commute locations and other touch-points in their respective tehsils. Extempore games and cricket based quiz games were also conducted. Winners of these on-ground campaigns were awarded with campaign branded merchandise such as tennis balls, bats, tees and more. A mobile visibility campaign saw a branded Tata Ace supported by promoters encourage citizens to enrol.

The campaign led to over 9000 team registrations and over 40,000 enquiries on the campaign’s toll-free phone number. This resulted in over 90,000 active applicants from across Rajasthan, not counting spectators. The total engagement numbers went well over 2 Crore people from across the state.

Udaipur and Jaipur witnessed maximum registration with over 1800 teams coming from each city. There were over 1300 teams from Bharatpur, 1500 teams from Bikaner, 1300 teams from Jodhpur and 1350 from Kota. Teams were selected by virtue of a lucky draw.

There were also some special teams who registered – All MBBS Students, Team of Coolies, All Deaf and Dumb, Rajasthan Police and Electricity Board. There were also seven all-woman teams. A total of 238 girls registered in all, and participants in the tournament even included a 66 year old female captain, and 13 applicants over the age of 50. There was also a uniquely abled team (hearing and speech challenged).

The winners and runners up of the tournament were awarded prize money of INR 3, 50,000 and INR 1, 40,000 respectively. The total prize money for winners in the inaugural edition of this tournament was to the tune of INR 30 Lacs.