Vodafone's #HakkeBakke tries to crack the moment marketing code

Can we get over cricket already? Well that does not seem to happen any time soon, especially when the Indian Premier League has overpowered our screens filling up our entertainment space. Thoroughly satisfying our greed for cricket, this event in its ninth edition has like always moved beyond the stadiums.

The contagious cricket fever in the country has beautified further as cheering for the game has a dance step now. Vodafone India churned out #HakkeBakke around this peculiar dance step to unify the celebration through dance.

Dancing to #SuperCheer

Giving rise to #HakkeBakke, Bollywood dancer, Lauren Gottlieb became the face of the campaign and soon was accompanied by other fans. The 12 seconds film comprises of the super enthusiast, cricket fanatic dancer who showcases excitement after a six identical to that of the million cricket fans across the country.

This short video introduces to us the #HakkeBakke step where Lauren further invites netizens to be a part of the madness and sharing their celebrating through #HakkeBakke. The song of the campaign is in Hindi which clarifies its reach only towards the hosts of the Indian Premier League which also happen to be the audience who admire this event the most.

Campaign for virality

The short campaign mainly focuses towards crowd funding, urging users to show their quirky style of the dance move to create a sense of unity towards the game and its obsession. The campaign found a way to automatically reach the masses as it encouraged people to dance and nominate their folks to do the same.

The campaign looks at highlighting the love for cricket by not supporting a particular player or team out of the eight battling with their bats against each other to reach the trophy. This campaign soon managed to grip on the social media bus with #HakkeBakke being shared everywhere. Cricketers like Hardik Pandya, Ashwin Ravi also showed their moves off the tunes along with celebrity Shibani Dandekar.

Basing their campaign on a very simple idea and an absolutely eccentric step, Vodafone managed to build an identity for itself through a very small effort without flashy illustrations, contests or even without longer films.

Social media cheer

With a million fans spread across the country, it becomes impossible to accommodate all of them in the stadium, this is where social media comes to the rescue by providing a shelter to fans to celebrate and share their adoration for the game.

Naming the step #HakkeBakke which holds no particular meaning but uncomplicated to memorize also manages to bring a brand recall.

The campaign however, lacks presence on Vodafone's social media pages. A campaign of this scale could have performed much better if the brand had pushed it well.

The step quickly became familiar to even the non-participants as it was spreading like wildfire all over Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Looking at its reach and virality #HakkeBakke could just be the step of 9^th edition of the IPL.