Mumbai Indians Surprise the city with Blue Santa

Mumbai has a magnanimous cricket fan following. Mumbai Indians Blue-ified the city, during Christmas, with #MIBlueSanta. IPL off-season coincided with Christmas; it was time to re-kindle love for the Paltan.

#MIBlueSanta was an offline-online campaign. This was the very first, large scale, online/offline Snapchat campaign activated by an Indian agency.

Santa was dressed in a blue costume and cruised through the city, visiting quintessential landmarks that form the foundation of Mumbai’s cricket history: Azad Maidan; Shivaji Park; Dadkar Maidan; and Poddar College, to name a few. He quizzed fans and reciprocated with goodies.

While he checked-in at these locations, Santa was also dropping hints about the Paltan’s whereabouts.

Had you been following the MI Paltan on Snapchat, you’d get location updates every 5 minutes.

On arriving at the first destination, the MI Paltan Snapchat board started populating with images.

The first winner was found on the streets of Mumbai, who correctly answered where the finals of the 2011 world cup were held.

An exciting imagery was created on the move.

The journey ended at the iconic Wankhede Stadium.

Simultaneously, Twitter was full of quizes and goodies. The campaign was well supported with exticing creatives on the micro-blogging platform.

Questions kept pouring in:

Q. 9 Oh Ho ho... this is the easiest question! Answer this one and WIN! RT & submit your answer using #MIBlueSanta pic.twitter.com/C3x27iejyy

— Mumbai Indians (@mipaltan) December 24, 2014

Q.13 What's your answer? Pehla or Doosra? RT & submit your answer using #MIBlueSantapic.twitter.com/kbR37dVbqJ

— Mumbai Indians (@mipaltan) December 24, 2014

With so much buzz, the results were promising.

The campaign was a hit for several reasons. Innovative use of Snapchat definitely tops the list.

Blue Santa comes next. The character became the talking point and united the online and offline activation. If we may, let you in on a fun fact, Santa was never legendarily red. So, Mumbai Indians actually rebranded the original Santa.

What we loved most was, revisiting iconic cricket destinations in Mumbai and giving people a chance to appreciate them.

Mumbai Indians nailed it with this campaign. Not only did they build brand recall and use innovative marketing techniques, but also took Mumbaikars on a nostalgic cricket journey.