How JioCinema encouraged new parents to name babies after women cricketers ft. Smriti Mandhana | #casestudy

JioCinema’s campaign Search Hijack went through Google search results and noticed the lack of baby names inspired by women athletes in India. By encouraging people to start naming babies after women cricketers, they aimed to bring recognition to them.

This case study shines light on recognizing women athletes and shows how Viacom Sports18 and JioCinema’s campaign Search Hijack, leveraged cricketer Smriti Mandhana’s followership, encouraging new parents to name their babies after women cricketers.

Category Introduction

Online video entertainment and video-on-demand services are among the primary kinds of digital media to have captured the imagination of Indian audiences. With a large chunk of the population subscribed to at least one video streaming service, forecasts for the OTT video market look promising. 

Mainstream subscription video-on-demand services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video have slowly penetrated the Indian market, where competition is rife with domestic contenders such as Disney+ Hotstar, Zee5, SonyLIV and JioCinema. Overall, the Indian revenue share in the Video Streaming (SVoD) market is projected to reach US$1.70 billion in 2023.

Brand Introduction

With India consisting of sports lovers, especially cricket, the revenue projected for sports from digital platforms is estimated to reach ₹1,540 crores in FY26 from ₹4,360 crores in FY21, rising at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22%, according to a report released by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), KPMG and IBDF (Indian Broadcasting and Digital Foundation). 

Viacom Sports 18 was the official broadcast and digital partner for the TATA WPL 2023, offering sports content to an audience across demographics and geographies. The channel aims to become India’s most-coveted broadcast network by providing fans with easy access to a comprehensive bouquet of international and premier sports content.

Summary

Conceptualized by 22feet Tribal Worldwide, DDB Mudra Group, the ‘Search Hijack’ campaign by Viacom Sports 18 and JioCinema involved giving baby girl name recommendations of India’s most popular women cricketers to new parents. In India, it’s common for babies’ names to be inspired by gods, film stars, and even male cricketers.

However, with the growing popularity of the WPL, Viacom Sports 18 believed it was time to stretch the boundaries and recommend names of women who are currently shining and are about to make history. The campaign’s tagline was ‘Yeh Naam, Naam Banega’.

Objective

With sports being known as predominately a male-centric show, it’s uncommon for baby girl names to be inspired by women cricketers. The objective of this campaign was to elevate the recognition and support for women’s cricket in India by celebrating the achievements of women cricketers, inspiring a new generation of idols, and making them household names.

Brief

JioCinema wanted the audience to watch, engage and consider women’s cricket as a respected sport in India.

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Creative Idea

While the insight of baby name inspirations is centred on male cricketers, women cricketers don’t seem to make the list. Observing the need for highlighted recognition, JioCinema came up with an idea to uplift women.

Enter – Search Hijack: Yeh Naam, Naam Banega

To inspire more parents to name their daughters after Women cricketers and legends, JioCinemas took action with the launch of the Women’s Premier League. 

Challenges

Limited awareness of women’s cricket and their achievement: Women’s cricket may not have the same level of recognition or support as men’s cricket in India, so increasing awareness and enthusiasm for the sport was a challenge too. 

Tactical Execution

As a part of the league’s promotional campaign, JioCinemas collaborated with Smriti Mandhana, a well-known cricketer. 

Whenever a new parent searched for baby name suggestions, Smriti Mandhana gave them recommendations of cricketers like Harmanpreet, Deepti, Shikha and Jemimah.

Sports18 also invited young kids to send in their entries and featured them on their social media pages.

To further convince the audience, Sports18 highlighted how women cricketers are amazing on ground and put the spotlight on some of the qualities they bring to the table.

This coupled with Youtube pre-rolls, search ads and via social gave parents a head start to names that are going to be iconic names in the future (all thanks to WPL). 

Results

With this idea, every name suggested came with the recognition of their accomplishments that needed to be celebrated. This not only helped popularize the team but also portrayed them as great role models for the future generation of girls.

Leveraging Smriti Mandhana’s star power, the campaign managed to reach more than 1.8 million views through her social media.

“Our vision is to develop the WPL into the world’s biggest women’s sporting league. Search Hijack is one of the many efforts we are making along those lines, to grow awareness about our women cricketers and their exploits on the field which will make them household names,” said Viacom18’s Creative Head of Marketing, Shagun Seda. “Our aspiration is to popularize these names to an extent where ‘Smriti’ or ‘Mithali’ are just as much sought after names as ‘Sachin’ or ‘Rohit’ eventually.”

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