Adidas’ ‘3 Ka Dream’: A Winning Formula for Brand Recognition and Engagement

The ICC Cricket World Cup 2023 is one of the most anticipated sporting events on the international cricket calendar. It is an event that transcends borders and celebrates the spirit of cricket on a global stage. In the upcoming round, India will serve as the host, setting the stage for an enthralling spectacle that will unite cricketing nations worldwide. With a storied history filled with iconic moments, thrilling matches, and the rise of cricketing legends, the ICC World Cup 2023 is poised to captivate the imagination of fans across the globe. Recognizing the immense global viewership and fan engagement associated with the tournament, this also becomes an important period for the brands to create meaningful and compelling advertising campaigns to reach their consumers.

A good advertisement, around a major cricket event, is not hard to come by. Remember ‘Mauka Mauka’? The ad featured a Pakistani cricket fan who is obsessed with beating India in a World Cup match. However, Pakistan has never beaten India in a World Cup match, and the fan is constantly disappointed. Or ‘Change the Game’? where Billy Bowden’s signature Tedi Ungli is given a hilarious origin story.

Last week, Adidas, the official kit sponsor of the Indian Cricket Team, unveiled its Cricket World Cup campaign – ‘3 Ka Dream’. But this is not a trip down memory lane; it’s about the future. With “3 Ka Dream”, Adidas takes storytelling to another level with a stack of subliminal stimuli that are sure to have Indian audiences dreaming of the iconic 3 stripes, as they salivate over the prospect of the Indian cricket team lifting a 3^rd trophy at the ICC World cup later this year.

Adidas doesn’t achieve this by following any formulas. Instead of a melodic anthem, the creative holds the story together with a rousing rap score sung by the exceptionally talented South Indian rapper Raftaar. The sensory appeal and atmospherics it evokes are so stirring that viewers will no doubt find themselves chanting the hook long after they’ve watched the ad.

Jo Sone Na De Vo Sapna

Teen Ka Dream Hai Apna

So, whether you are a fan of cricket or not, if you watch this advertisement, you can be sure that between the sharp editing and a revamped ODI jersey, every Indian’s unwavering support for Team India will be ignited. ‘3 Ka Dream’ gives words to over a billion Indian fans’ dream to see their team win a third ODI World Cup.

As the leading marketing agency in measuring and predicting advertising effectiveness, System1 tested the new campaign in India with 150 respondents, and here’s what we found:

• Topline results

Strong long-term brand building, exceptional short-term sales activation, and exceptional brand recognition.

Let’s dive into the few aspects that contribute to its success.

• Emotion

The key role of brand-building advertising is to create mental availability, which is to get consumers to remember a brand and put it at the top of their mental shopping list. A brand that can make viewers feel good through its advertising, will guide them quickly in choosing the brand when making a purchase.#

Cricket holds a special place in every heart of Indian. India has won two ICC World Cup trophies in 1983 and in 2011. The ad resonates with the country’s aspirations to secure a third ODI World Cup victory and successfully establishes exceptional positive emotional engagement with viewers with a staggering 65% level of happiness and 27% level of surprise.

• Soundtrack

Music is an incredibly powerful component in advertising. This is highlighted in Orlando Wood’s books on advertising effectiveness, Lemon and Look Out. Orlando explores Iain McGilchrist’s work on brain hemisphere theory and its implications on the brain’s attentional styles, features of advertising, and so on.

The right brain looks out for things of interest, for what stands out; it is attuned to novelty and ambiguity. The right brain is responsible for broad and vigilant attention, alert to the environment around us. If advertising is to get noticed, it needs in nearly every context to be of interest to the right brain.

The left brain is more goal-oriented, literal, and focused on things (the product) rather than people, to deliver a message and present the facts. It would look flat, have no depth or perspective, no backdrop. It would favour abstraction and show the parts or features of things (e.g., the car mirror) or the body (e.g., the mouth) rather than the whole. People would be devitalized, expressionless. Because the left brain’s primary tool is language, it would feature unilateral communication – prominent voiceover, and monologue to the camera. Words would obtrude upon the visuals, spelling out what you should be thinking and how you should be reacting to what you’re seeing. It would favour fast-paced snapshot montages or freeze-frame effects over free-flowing drama.

The left brain does language; the right brain does music. Music has a real bearing on how people feel about an ad. System1 has seen different music tracks on the same ad make the difference between a 3-Star and a 5-Star performance.

Music is not something that should be tackled as an afterthought because it can change your entire direction of travel and put a completely different complexion to an idea. Music also helps people to interpret what’s happening as a scene unfolds, saying something about the relationship between characters and conveying a sense of time and place.

In this ad, the lyrics play a key role in communicating the narrative and imbue a sense of pride, unity, and belief. Source.

• Fluency

When it comes to fluency, we know that the more easily a brand is recognized the easier it is to choose and charge a premium for. One of the ways for brands to drive fluency is by leveraging their distinctive assets. A distinctive brand asset is any piece of content, written, verbal, or other sensorial that cues the correct brand. The impact of the use of characters in TV advertising, we see that those campaigns deploying such a distinctive asset outperformed other campaigns on multiple business effects (market share gain, profit gain, etc.).

In this ad, the brand fluency is unsurprisingly Exceptional where viewers recognized the brand within the first 2 seconds and 95% of viewers correctly identified the brand by the end of the ad.