Star Re-Imagine awards: “IPL is not yet the Superbowl but will get there soon”: Gautam Thakar

The second edition of the Star Re-Imagine awards was held in Mumbai on May 17, 2019. Re-Imagine is Star India’s initiative to reward the best creative work displayed on the Star Sports channels and Hotstar during the Indian Premier League broadcast. As per The Economic Times, the broadcaster had set a target to garner Rs 2,100 crore from television and digital advertising. The 30-second-slots during the tournament was sold north of Rs 10 lakh.

Gautam Thakar, Star Sports, CEO in his welcome note mentioned that “more than 300 campaigns aired” during the tournament, “A lot of what is making IPL bigger and bigger is the creative work that is being done. The advertising has been amazing, it has been growing and improving every year. We all talk about making the Super Bowl event. We are probably not there yet, but I am pretty confident with where we are, it is going to get there soon,” he added.

Gautam Thakar,CEO, Star Sports

A video footage was played on giant screens in the hall which featured Piyush Pandey, global CCO, Ogilvy stating, “IPL is the opportunity for test players to play T20” and it seems like he along with other jury members comprising of Dave Trott, R. Balki, Rama Bijapurkar and Swati Bhattacharya found Bisleri and Netflix playing the best during the breaks this year.

Bisleri - Best Creative on TV

‘Har Paani Ki Bottle Bisleri Nahin’ film, conceptualised by 82.5 Communications won the ‘Best Creative on TV’ award. While the other top honour, ‘Best Creative on Digital’ went to Netflix’s campaign promoting its series ‘Selection Day’. As per the jury members, the ‘Selection Day’ campaign conceptualised by The Script Room, displayed the best usage of Integrated Media.

Apart from the winners, Amazon Echo’s – ‘#JustAsk’, Budweiser’s – ‘Becks Ice - packaged drinking water’, Coca Cola’s – ‘Say it with coke’, Dream11’s – ‘Yeh game hai mahaan’, Freecharge’s – ‘Sirf app nahi, appreciation’, Intel’s – ‘Change your pc, change your business’, Snickers’ – ‘Hungry? Grab a snickers’ and Swiggy’s – ‘What a Delivery’ got a special mention.

Summing up the 12th edition of Indian Premier League, Gautam Thakar added, “This year, the strong regional strategy of having four independent dedicated language channels in Tamil, Telugu, Bangla, and Kannada, the Select Dugout and Super Funday feed contributed immensely to the increased reach of VIVO IPL. The success of this year has been even more gratifying, that despite the Indian general elections and TRAI regulations, VIVO IPL continues to grow.”