upGrad married data science to the sport of cricket on screen zero for improving brand awareness

With an urgency to reach millions of cricket fans, upGrad identified the use of data science in cricket. Positioning themselves as a leader in specialisation courses, the campaign from upGrad tied up the relevance of data science to modern-day cricket. 

To retain brand tonality and leverage influencer marketing Vikram Sathaye, a renowned cricket presenter, analyst & stand-up comedian, took up the role of ‘Data Scientwist’ to endorse the campaign. upGrad managed to capture significant interest with Glance audiences—including those consuming cricket content as well as those looking for entertainment. With Glance, the EdTech company moved away from traditional advertising formats by fostering community engagement on millions of lock screens. 

The campaign created a huge buzz amongst millions of Glance users during its run time, reaching over 16Mn+ users, with over 30Mn+ views. 75% of the exposure was from Tier I cities like Delhi, Pune, Bangalore and Mumbai, where audiences showed more than 51% engagement in these regions. 85% of the clicks were unique clicks implying it was clean, non-bot traffic, and a whopping 90% of clicks came from Tier I cities like the ones mentioned above. 

Videos during the key matches recorded maximum attention as audience anticipation was well-timed with the humour in videos. Minimal, eye-grabbing creatives gave the brand a chance to stand out in the clutter and drive real-time engagement with potential customers. Vikram Sathaye’s social influence alone touched 91K+ users, gathering 88K+ views in total. 

upGrad campaigned across 16 cities using Glance, to inspire interest among target audiences mapped on three levels – Cricket enthusiasts, viewers engaged with content from Edu-tech apps, and users with Appographic ownership. The campaign was driven by time-targeted content dissemination in sync with ongoing cricket match schedules. 

Stat-based infographics were created based on every script to highlight the data science relation to upGrad’s offerings. The brand’s tonality of quirky corporate humour was at the core of cricket content, driven further by Vikram Sathaye’s influence. 64 original video content pieces were created, tailored to the response and engagement of users. A range of exclusive 20-30 sec scripts was built on data points pertaining to respective matches, adhering to the festive cheer of the sporting season. The content was featured to the audience from 12 PM to 10 PM, which is just before or during the matches, thus increasing the relevance of the content.  

For all the creatives, the focus was engagement with cricket enthusiasts from cheerful humour and clever match breakdowns, gathering a higher brand recall for upGrad.