Unofficial Partner Podcast

UP514: Inside Edge x The Big Idea: Is cricket having a moment?

• Richard Gillis

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Nike, Drake and Beats have just released cricket themed campaigns.

WTF? Is cricket cool?

Richard asked Mike Jakeman and Simon Moore to list their best and worst cricket themed campaigns and the result is a conversation about cliches, tropes and cultural relevance.

The following ads are referenced in the podcast. 

Beats by Dre 2025

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/homeground-london_checkshubman-gillshining-bright-in-the-activity-7376572600484782080-MxP2?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&rcm=ACoAAADNCmgB-26i_-T9u7OfQ8UB-pRP3VJ8mew

Nike Nocta and Drake

https://sportsverse.substack.com/p/cricket-nike-drake-sportswear-west-indies-nocta-antigua

KitKat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l83ANUS3I8E

Pepsi - Change The Game - 2011

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4tpN_egJnM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRbKZ7rkk7A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEnzSbQnFBg

Nike India, Bleed Blue - 2011

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eDoDQo_T1c

Nike Yards - 2011  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD59CpKMQY0

Make Every Yard Count - 2014 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtxLmInvFcw

Hilton - No Boundaries 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wif0tbWelrE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv3OPxbTARU

Booking.com It starts with a booking 2022

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ozoQaqKkJ4

Cadbury’s Dairy Milk - Good Luck Girls 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_OtC06ndUE&t=40s

Here’s the original from the nineties

https://youtu.be/e7JATezA1nY?si=vPubhZaP4vZ8-AyU

Emirates - Bollywood Cricket Welcome On-board Demo 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JfuwuDqjag

Adidas - Made for Cricket - 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1TXNXe15fA

Yorkshire Tea -  Everything Stops for Tea -2013

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Hello, Richard Gillis here. Welcome to Unofficial Partner Sports Business Podcast. Um, we're gonna do something a bit different today, putting together two of our series one, the Inside Edge series about the business of cricket with Mike Jaman. And then the other is the Big Idea with Simon Moore, where we talk about creative in sports marketing and advertising The subject is cricket. And what happens to cricket when it's filtered through the advertising industry what are the cliches and tropes that we see regularly attached to the sport? And how are those changing and what the difference is between how cricket shows up in India and Indian based campaigns versus those in England and other countries. I asked both Mike and Simon to bring along what they see as good and bad examples of cricket based advertising, and then we get into it. I hope you enjoy it. It's fun.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

This is like two worlds coming together. So me and Mike had a drink in the Three Kings in Clarkenwell the other day, which again is one of my favorite horns Simon know. I Like this'cause it's sort of collaboration between two I've never done this before. I think, I think this is the future mashing things together. A create a CoLab.

Simon Moore:

Which ones are we gonna discuss? I think definitely the Nike top of the buses thing. I really like that.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Yeah, I think as many as we, can. I should introduce both of you again. Mike Jakeman, inside Edge co-host. I dunno whether it's an, an episode of Inside Edge or an episode of the Big Idea. But anyway, well say hello to both of you. Hi, Mike.

Mike Jakeman:

Hi, Richard.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

I'm looking for, I'm looking forward to this. Mike, you're gonna be tested on your advertising creative chops.

Mike Jakeman:

It could be that I've been in the wrong business for all this time. This could be standing on the precipice or something really exciting,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

we could be exposed. Simon and Simon, welcome to you also.

Simon Moore:

Hello?

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

I remember Simon. So there, there's a, I'll just give a bit of context for this go. And this is going back quite a while. Me and s worked for Cake at the time, and a Cricket World Cup, and it might have been a women's cricket World Cup, but we did, we

Simon Moore:

It was. Yeah.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

did some sort of stuff on that, didn't we? And, and it was really successful. And I remember going into the tube at, it must have been the embankment or somewhere around there, and the creative was plastered. It did one of those drenches on the whole of the underground. And so the work that I'd f, I'd first seen on Simon's on sort of laptop or on his computer screen, suddenly across town. And it it was really quite a thing. I, you know, having not been in, I'm not obviously a creative advertising person. That was quite a thrill, I thought. Do you remember that?

Simon Moore:

Yeah. No, it's, I think that's the first time that happens here. And for me it was for queer as folk for Channel four at the end of the nineties, and I walked out Caledonian Road Tube. And there was my work and I was like, gobsmacked, big 96 sheet. It was just like, wow. And then that wears off pretty quickly, you know? And you go, that's just another billboard.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Well, it's

Simon Moore:

you know, for a moment it was exciting.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

it's a bit like your mike, your first byline, isn't it? That's always quite exciting as well.

Mike Jakeman:

And there's, it is true that those things probably do diminish over time. It's impossible. I mean, I imagine it's also like scoring your first test a hundred. Like, you know, you, you value all of them, but some of the are gonna stand out

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

First cut is the deepest, as someone once said.

Simon Moore:

Do you know that Steve Redgrave story, about him winning golds over a series of different Olympics? And like the first, you know, the first, after the first one he said, he was like just high off it for about six months. He was like, so excited. And then the second one, it was a month. The third time it was like a week. And then like the, you said the last time he got a gold, as he was crossing the line, he, he was thinking, why am I still doing this? Literally as he was winning the gold, he was like, what? Why am I bothering with this?

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Yeah. Yeah. Well you can imagine Clay.'cause rowing is quite a sort of I played golf with Steve Redgrave once

Simon Moore:

Did you?

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

yeah, it was really interesting but he, he did say after a while you are just doing the same thing for 25 years. You know, it's not like football or cricket. There are dimensions to it. You are

Simon Moore:

Yeah. Yeah.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

you're in

Simon Moore:

Yeah.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

ergo and you're going back and forward and pulling it. It's quite a narrow range of sort of movement as well. you'd have to, be so strong psychologically, I suppose, which again is one. That's the reason I've never, I haven't got five gold medals, frankly,

Simon Moore:

Yeah. I mean, I,

Mike Jakeman:

his Olympics follow the same trend because he did all this work on the, and then got given a gold medal. He never had it any other way.

Simon Moore:

that story was told by, John Lloyd do you know John Lloyd? The guy who created like yeah, yeah. Black hat and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Like, and uh, you know, he had all this success and then he lost, basically lost it in the early two thousands. It might have been late nineties or early 2000. He just kind of lost it completely and was like, I've, my, I've wasted my life. It's what, you know, he's got like this wall full of awards. And was like, just what, what a waste of time. And but then sort of pulled himself back together, invented qi. So not all bad.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Well, and again, without going on too much of a tangent, Jonathan Edwards, again is interesting on this.'cause obviously he was a, he sort of lost god, had a religious upbringing, and then he was at one of the Olympics he said, you know, is there more to jumping into a sandpit? You know, and, and that you sort of,

Simon Moore:

if you could make that sound even more ridiculous then

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

shit, I've been, I've spent my life jumping into a sandpit. I mean, it's, but you know, very

Simon Moore:

there Yeah.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

way into the sandpit, but still jumping into a sandpit. okay, I'm gonna just, we need to, I'm gonna set this up a little bit because the idea behind this and. It's not a complicated one, but I was, I was reading there's a couple of new bits of work that we sort of dive into cricket's relationship with the idea and creative advertising and what happens to cricket in that process Before we do that, there was a couple of things. One, I saw a nice substack called sports verse and I'll give him a a name check. His name is Daniel Yor Miller, and I think he used to be a writer on the business of fashion, but he's got a really nice sport meets fashion, substack newsletter, he flagged something, a new Nike campaign under, it's called Nocta, which is again new. This is new to me. You, you two might be sitting there bedecked in Nocta gear for all I know, but is Nike's street streetwear focused sub-label in partnership with Drake. Which I think, you know, if that's a sentence I was, I've never really sort of, I can't remember ever saying, but it released its latest collection, the 4 25 Cardinal stock capsule. Again, these are all words, is an ode to antigen cricket culture with the campaign featuring the fictitious Nocta Cricket Association and displaying street and grassroots cricket scenes on the Caribbean island where it was shot. The clothing is an interesting blend of Okta's stripped down approach to street wear with crickets, traditional or white uniform. So, and there's some very nice imagery and photography but I sent that around to you two thinking, okay, there's something here. the other one was. There is a new bit of work by home ground who have been on the podcast relatively recently. And they, it, the client was Beats, and again, it was a cricket themed piece of creative, bit of advertising, nice film with, and I think it was shaman Gill as the cricketer in the in the creative. I might be wrong about that actually. But anyway, it was a, it was a famous modern Indian cricketer and I just thought that was, again, two things there. Probably doing two different jobs, but I wonder what the history of cricket and advertising is. So then I then came to you two and said, okay, gimme a list of your favorite cricket campaigns, ad campaigns, and we will then go through and say, yes, we like that one, don't like that one. And generally have a chat about the relationship between cricket and creative. So that's where we are. Simon Moore. Award winning award. I have to do, do I have to use

Simon Moore:

I hate it when you say that. Literally like, Ugh. Anyway,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

You can

Simon Moore:

carry on.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

that, but that's being self-deprecating. performative, self-deprecation. I think that's

Simon Moore:

Right.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

That's you are saying, oh no. Oh no.

Simon Moore:

there's not, there's nothing performative about it. Literally, please stop saying it.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

So talk to me about cricket. What, before we get into specific campaigns,

Simon Moore:

Yeah,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

cricket comes in the door of an advertising agency,

Simon Moore:

I.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

What do we think? Just gimme a, your top line on where your head might go. And ultimately we'll get to quite a lot of cliches hanging around and, and do we want to play in the cliches or do we want to counter the cliches? And that's always a question anyway. What do you think?

Simon Moore:

I think that there's a danger when it, when cricket walks in the DA door, there's a danger that you do it, you treat it like rugby or football, and you do that kind of list of moments that I put, you know, I put in an email to you, which was kind of the, the standard kind of sport advertising, which kind of goes, hmm, changing room, moody, close up, probably a bit of sweat dripping down black and white. And then the slow walking to the arena, up the tunnel, tension, silence, some kind of flashback to when they were a child playing the, the sport against in the street. And then like suddenly this kind of moment, this kind of the crowd all gas, some weights, and then the goal or the strike or the, you know, whatever it is. And the crowd roars and the logo pops up and it's a, you know, it's an ongoing cliche. In rugby and football. And there's the danger that you do that with cricket. And I think cricket is more interesting than that. I think it's a, it's a more unusual game, but I understand that you want to sell to punters and they like these things, so why not sell it like that? So that's the danger I think.'cause you want to like, I, you know, just talking about that sort of fictitious cricket club, cricket authority that they thought, I really like that idea. I think there's not enough works of, in advertising in general, there's not enough works of fiction. You know, there's kind of too much fact and kind of real life and not enough kind of like strange, funny little stories that we can kind of get behind. And that's especially true in sport. And I realize that's because in sport, sport is full of heroes and you kind of wanna make them the star. But I kind of think you can play more if you've got a fiction. There you go. That's my take. That's my hot take.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Mike, come in on this. Anything there you wanna pick up on?

Simon Moore:

I.

Mike Jakeman:

So the, the three of us have been watching this series of a adverts TV adverts by Nike in India, that were all released the, the 2010s. And there are some common themes, these, which I'll sort of summarize quickly what they look like. So there's lots of urban scenes, there's lots of fast editing. This is, you can tell I'm not an so please jump in with the correct terminology. Award-winning Simon Moore. There's one, there's one where some Indian cricket fans on the way to the game or on a bus, there's a traffic jam. So in, of course, they, a cricket match breaks out on the top of all of the vehicles in the traffic jam. There's another one where just shows scenes from cricket matches. So village cricket matches, MidAm cricket matches, professional cricket matches all jump. And the, the, the cuts are all extremely fast, which show you like a bowler running in, except it's actually 20 different bowlers, but the actions are very kind of repeatable, et cetera. What I'm saying about these is that they are all designed to make, to emphasize certain things about cricket, which is that it is a physical sport. it's requires like a lot of exertion. It's very tough. It's very, you can see like muscles flexing and the, the physical effort. This is like tough professional sport. In a way that, you know, this uses to me lots of very familiar tropes from, as you said, football, rugby, also athletics. Like anything that kind of establishes like the physical demands of sports is then being applied to cricket, which I find interesting because it ignores the fact that cricket has sort of a reputation as being a little bit different to those sports in that it is quirky, it's traditional, it can be played by people of all ages. perhaps, you know, some professional cricketers do not look like these athletes from these other sports. But that's completely ignored in favor of we need to push the, the angle that this is a very demanding tough sport. So although I. Fact that they're like beautifully shot and extremely well edited and they, they're genuinely kind, exciting things to watch. I feel like the cricket of Cricket has been, was toned down, in favor of kind of making this sport seem slightly more generic. Now, what I find particularly interesting is that these, this series of films was all made for broadcast in India. And in a way you sort of, I feel like this is a kind of an argument you perhaps need to convince fans in Europe or America of like, cricket. This genteel

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Yeah.

Mike Jakeman:

be really exciting and can be really physical, but surely if there's a market in the world that knows what the, you know, what cricket looks like, it's, it's India. And these films could all have been shot by like Paul Greengrass, the kind of the, the Bour and United 93 filmmaker. Like, you know, they're really kind of visceral. so I find that quite interesting that they chose to take that approach in India. But, what do you guys think?

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

think India is key question in all of this because it's the, why cricket question you very quickly. That just solves that straight away in a way that it doesn't for the Drake, Nike stuff or it doesn't for, you know, an English audience or an O you know, so cricket is just so central to cultural story that it plays the role of football in India. So again, there's a, and I saw in some of the Nike work, obvious crossovers to some of the famous football ads. Like there's a Nike ad from the airport where they're

Simon Moore:

Yeah, I was gonna say that one. Yeah. Yeah. The airport match. Yeah. Where

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

football

Simon Moore:

a game just breaks out.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Yeah. And so there was a sort of, and the cuts are very similar, so it felt like a, the bones of it or the structure of the, the, the thing echoes of that and whether or not that was, you know, again, it's, whether that's a cliche or an homage, you know, it's, it is the, the line. But, so India and cricket, there's a sort of different game going on culturally, I think in terms of the, the medium and then, and the way in which cricket is being used. The other bit to it I thought was quite interesting was the, you are right about the sort of physicality of it. Quite often what I liked about those Nike ads was actually it centered on the cricket. It's the same with the Pepsi ads actually, the, we, we talk about those separately, but the, sometimes when a sport and particularly cricket comes in the room, and I do remember this, and I've mentioned this a couple of times on the podcast. It's, there is a. Or we can't go route one, we can't talk about the cricket, the sport, we have to find some other reason or other territory. And in cricket you very quickly get to sort of culture and food is one that know, and, and just the color of the Indian, dress or you then take it around the world with Australia, England, west Indies, South Africa, all these interesting countries. But you then lapse into national stereotypes quite often. You know, you get Australians with core cats and you know, so I think Simon, it comes to, I, I'm trying to think what causes the problem when problems arise. And it might be to do with lack of confidence in the product of the sport itself to take. The weight of the campaign. And there's also, I think, a lack of, there's a distance between the people making the ads and the people watching cricket. And I think that's, that's been a problem with football over the years in terms of the representation of football fans. Anyone who's been to a football match, you wouldn't recognize a the sort of building society version of a football fan in their advertising. It's not real. And so there is that distance. But what do you think about that in terms of just the, that in the head of the creative whilst thinking about arm to length, what cricket is?

Simon Moore:

So I think there's a number of things here within India. Cricket is the every man sport, and it's not in this country. It's a posh people sport. Fundamentally, it's a thing that posh people do.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

the

Simon Moore:

It's a thing that posh people watch and posh people.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

to the ECB Simon and, and the

Simon Moore:

Great. Put it, put it on. I'll have, I'll have a little chat with them.'cause that's what it is. If you ask the average person on the street, it's, it's a very middle class thing to both watch and participate in. And, and, and I, you, I don't think that's a shame. I don't, I don't agree with that. I like,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

think.

Simon Moore:

yeah.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

you there? I think, I'm not the ECB line on this would be, and I'm not representing the ECBI, I like to sort of, pose questions of the ECB as much as, as anything else. I think that is an example of an advertiser's view of a cricket, what cricket is. don't think that's real. I think cricket is a far more democratic sport than have just articulated.

Simon Moore:

I don't see, I, that's not me saying that. I don't, I think, I think they have made huge strides in making it very democratic and I think it, it is, it is way more democratic than it was. Fundamentally if you went to the average person on the street?

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

sorry to interrupt you, but I think it's less democratic than it was. was always very democratic, played by every part of society in, in the, in England, but is probably less so now, but it's still actually not the sort of private score cliche that sort of etonians and harrow playing at Lord's sort of vibe.

Simon Moore:

Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, if I, if I walk through Chartwell Park, which is nearest part to me, which has South End Cricket Club in the middle of it, and I walk past that on a day when they're playing the game, the type of people that are gathered around watching that game is a, is a certain demographic that is different to the demographic that will be sat, stood around the football pitch, watching the kids play football.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Okay.

Simon Moore:

a very different type of person and I think, you know, and you, yes, you might be right, there's plenty of people enjoying a day out at Lords. As a treat or whatever.'cause there's always way to go to the cricket, but I think as generally as cricket across the country, that is enjoyed by middle classes. I, I, you know, and I don't think that's an advertiser's take, I think that's an honest observation of kind of look at the people going to these things that I'm not, and I'm not objecting to that. What I'm saying is it's not an every month's sport and that's not an advertising.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

have Mike's view on this.

Mike Jakeman:

you could both be right I think cricket's reach is greater than people give it for. But at the same time, what we're talking about here is tropes that are, that people associate cricket. So there's a difference between what it is and its reputation. And that's, you know, in your Simon speaking to Cricket's reputation, and Richard are speaking to what Cricket

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Simon is in many ways the sort of every man of the metropolitan elite adver that, that, that populates advertising agencies.

Simon Moore:

It's unbelievable. Like I don't even.

Mike Jakeman:

so what, what, what we've, what I need an advertising person to answer for me is much. Adv like adverts should or should not, or have to lean on quick

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Yeah, that's a good question.

Mike Jakeman:

And, all of, all of the ones in cricket in England at least tend to be not the gritty physical flexed muscles stuff that I talked about earlier on, but the genteel time for tea stuff that Simon's leaning on,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Well, we should say that one of the,

Mike Jakeman:

on that for

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

one of the things in our list is Yorkshire T. Everything starts for T is the one you're referencing 2013. And that by comparison to the Nike thing, you know, it's a stark comparison, but you again, you are looking at a version, sorry, I interrupted you Simon, you want to come back on? I think it's a really interesting question and this gets to sponsorship as well, because actually have they bought the cliche, you know, because if you buy rugby, if you buy cricket, if you buy football, you are buying the cliche probably, and you don't actually want. A sort of strategy and insight desk at an advertising agency say, no, actually it's broader than that. And they say no sort of, I want the cliche. That's what I, I'm an insurance company and I want the Ruger bugger from t.

Simon Moore:

So I think that at the heart of this is who are you going after, who are you hoping to sell to? And are you going after cricket fans? In which case it's a particular approach. Or are you trying to pull in new cricket fans? In which case it's a very different approach. And if you're trying to pull in new cricket fans, the easiest way to do that is to go through the language of sport they already love and go. This is not that far away from sport. You already love football and rugby. However, if you wanted to appeal to cricket fans, there's a, you know, the thing. All the things that those people love, like stopping fatigue and test match special and all that kind of stuff. You want to play in that area because you're wanting to talk to them about the thing they love and, and join in and be part of the thing they love. And those are two, those are two very different things. You know, when we did Women's World Cup, you know, we were looking to pull in, it's, it's, we were looking to pull in families and women and all that kind of like whole new markets to, to into cricket. That's a very different premise to go. And so you wanna make it look exciting and dynamic and, you know, and, and challenging and kind of breaking the rules and all that kind of stuff. Whereas, you know, if I was trying to sell something to Cricket fans, probably a different approach. In fact, at the same time we did another, we did another major men's tournament. I can't remember what it was. It wasn't the World Cup, but it was something like that. And we did all that as, sort of, I mean this is going back a while now. This sounds like the biggest cliche in the world, but we did it all as Marvel comic book sort of style.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Yeah.

Simon Moore:

had all these, we had all these reportage of the match done kind of within two days. They were up on massive walls of these kind of what happened in the match kind of thing of done as a kind of Marvel comic book strip.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Yeah, no, I remember that

Mike Jakeman:

can you, can you tell us Simon, about the Women's World Cup strategy and what you did then? Because if this is taking the, let's draw new people into cricket, this is

Simon Moore:

Well,

Mike Jakeman:

of like, of, of one approach that you discussed previously.

Simon Moore:

I'll tell you what, I'll tell you. Like obviously we were struggling with it for ages and it was a classic, one of those ones where I went out for a fag and had a blinding moment of inspiration. And it was, it was the round about the time of, well, just a short while after Beyonce had done. Who runs the world with the Anine girls. And I thought that was quite interesting. And at the same time, it was that God, what was her name? The woman that came before Boris, I can't remember her name,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

there

Simon Moore:

running through the fields of wheat. Theresa May, Theresa May was Prime Minister. It was looking like Hillary was gonna be the president of the US and Merkel was up for reelection in Germany all in the kind of same year. And it, and it was like, okay, so this is kind of like, this is women running the world is kind of like a thing. And we've got the world word runs in there, so it rather, so the Beyonce was who Run the world and we changed it to who runs the world with no answer to that. And it just became like a big statement of who runs the world. And then we had this like, great lineup of all the captains and it, you know, it just really, it just popped, it looked really good. We shot it really well. We had a kind of PR story as well of like,'cause we shot'em all in the, in the long room at Lords and obviously that was a place for a long time that women couldn't be in there at all. So that was kind of quite a, a decent, you know, I think, I think that ended at the end of the nineties, but it still sort of felt kind of punchy to have all these women lined up in the long room, you know, looking kind of like, yeah, we're taking on the establishment, we're changing things and, and it sort of fit the news agenda of the time. So that's what we did.

Mike Jakeman:

Do we need to make a distinction here between advertising campaigns that are selling cricket and advertising campaigns that are using cricket to sell something else? So

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Yes.

Mike Jakeman:

Nike selling sports

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Yeah.

Mike Jakeman:

clothing versus the strategy that you use to sell to sport.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

I think we do. And also I think there's a sort of a further distinction between the endemic brands and the non-endemic brands. So for example, what I mean by that is, is the sort of, if you are, if they're Nike, Adidas, Puma they are in. in the sport at particular times. Nike have come in and out of cricket. It's mainly about India and the Indian market normally. It's increasingly, there's an American angle to this as well, which I think is quite interesting, talks to our previous conversations about, know, cricket in America and future conversations. But if you look at the sort of history of brand campaigns from the endemics, you've got Nike obviously we just talked about yards, just do it. The Nocta Drake stuff, Adidas's Wall Cricket, which again was a sort of 2013 and normally around. Big ICC moments and events. Puma sock them, Vera Coley partnership. they are sort of expected to be absolutely embedded in the sport and they know sport better than any of the others, better than a building society, better than Pepsi Coke, than, you know, a hotel brand or a cup of, you know, a tea brand or whatever. So, and it's easier, frankly, for them to tell that story with authenticity than it is for, you know, tea. So it's a harder job. Well, Simon, you talked to, talked to this in terms of the job, the difference between an endemic and non-endemic brand in, you know, in terms of making those connections.'cause quite often then get to some, the sort of reason for being there has to be explained. And that is where quite often you get quite sort of cliched. That the, let's talk about booking.com, which was a pretty dark. But you can see how it, how they got there. But it's, it's very straight, straight back. I go.

Simon Moore:

Well, yeah, it is, but it's, I mean, it, it tells me nothing does it? I mean it absolutely, it's interchangeable. I think the things about Nike and Adidas do that is they bring a cool anyway to, even if, even if you don't, like, even if you've got no interest in cricket, you kind of go, that's kind of quite a cool ad because they bring all of their legacy already of all of that great advertising they've done, you know, that they're doing. So immediately it has that sense of presence that is, you know, powerful, punchy stuff. Whereas booking.com doesn't have that and it's very much, I think that ad is very much an afterthought that booking.com ad is like, oh my God, we've sponsored this. What do we do now? And not, they've not really sort it through,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

But

Simon Moore:

but I think, I think.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

that to Emirates. So Emirates had the same job, basically. The same job is, think of an airline when you think, you know, around a cricket event. They've, they've done a deal and you know, the, the job of creative has landed at the, the desk of someone like you. They've come with and again, it's become, it, it was successful initially is

Simon Moore:

Yeah, and I remember talk when we, when we were pitching for, for women's cricket, I remember we looked at it thinking, God, this is, this is a brilliant idea. It's just a, it's just really well thought through. They're kind of married. Three things that wouldn't necessarily have gone together previously that, that, you know, done, done really, really well.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

and the immersion in.

Simon Moore:

So Booking do, yeah, so booking.com is kind of like a man with his father enjoying the cricket team's doing quite well. He thinks, oh my goodness, let's get him to the final, or whatever it is. And so suddenly they're transported to halfway across the world to the cricket, and then they're str, they're strolling through the lobby of their hotel and having to run into a famous player who, I don't know who that is, but doesn't really matter. It's an interchangeable famous player who sort of nods that nods at them, and they're all excited. It, it, it's absolutely meaningless. Whereas Emirates,

Mike Jakeman:

As well where they find themselves the

Simon Moore:

yeah,

Mike Jakeman:

and of course

Simon Moore:

he catches the ball. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I forgot I, for, forgot about that bit. But yes, that is another awful bit of it. Whereas Emirates took this approach of like, let's teach audiences by having our flight attendants go onto the, onto the pitch and teach the audiences how to celebrate. Various different types of scoring moments within the game through their classic sort of airline demonstration and mix into that a, a Bollywood celebration at the end of it. So, if it's a six, we do this. And they did sort of some Bollywood dance style moves and it was, it, it looked sort of joyous and fun. It looked like the crowd were enjoying it, it was sort of like a halftime entertainment thing, but it kind of blew up way bigger than that and became this, this really great little moment that was kinda like, yeah, you, you knew, you, you picked out the thing about rather than going booking do Tom, do you know you can book hotels on booking up.com? I mean, it's like everybody knows that you're telling people nothing, whereas they went, we've got really great flight attendants. We're not gonna talk about planes or where you can go, we've just got really great flight attendants. They're, they're really good at, you know, doing stuff. And so it's a really smart response.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

is, it is also, I wrote the word joyous down as well when I watched

Simon Moore:

Hmm.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

and and I thought it's important that people don't forget that, isn't it?'cause actually it's odd that sometimes sport becomes less interesting when it goes filtered through advertising. It should be the other way around, shouldn't it? I mean, it, it's the joy and fun and, okay. Competition and whatever. All of these things, that's what the, the whole point of it is. So I agree with you. I, and I wasn't expecting to,'cause I think it might be that I've seen a few iterations of that since,

Simon Moore:

Right.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

but that one I really struck me as I really liked it and it was really

Simon Moore:

I think one of the things is it's not trying to do too much. Is it? It's not trying to go, oh, you it's not trying to explain how much more leg room you get on an Emirates flight or how our planes are 97% punctual, or any, or any of those kind of like messages that clients are often desperate to crowbar in to something because this isn't really important that people know this because we're the best at this. They've gone, we've just got great flight attendants, so let's go and do something joyous with them, and, and it really works for that because it's not trying to oversell you. Whereas booking.com. It's basically trying to explain how booking a holiday works, which I suspect we're all kind of probably pretty good at by now.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

the,

Mike Jakeman:

also setting you up to fail because there is never an occasion where I'm sat at home thinking, gosh, in a few clicks, I'd really like to be watching a major sporting

Simon Moore:

Yeah,

Mike Jakeman:

there, and everything falls into place

Simon Moore:

you're catching a ball.

Mike Jakeman:

advert. Which also has another sin, which is entirely unrealistic depictions of the sport itself.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

yeah.

Mike Jakeman:

Which I also don't like and is, is to me that's an instant, as a sports journalist, is an instant red flag of someone who doesn't really get the brief. If you show me an unrealistic scene of the sport, if it's hammy and intended to be like that, and we can talk about Cadburys in a minute,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Yeah.

Mike Jakeman:

perhaps as a lead off from this then that's fine because it's all, you know, done with a, a wink and a nudge,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Yeah.

Mike Jakeman:

it's a shared joke. But when it's supposed to look slick and realistic and it isn't, then I'm just

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Well, I think, I think that comes to the sort of, again, it, it talks to they know the audience? Do they know the sport? Are they guessing or do they know? You know, and I think that there was, someone in the Emirates strategy team knows cricket and there, it, it wasn't an o it didn't overplay its role. It, there was a joke there that I understood and got, and it was, they had fun with it. And I reward them for that because I carried on watching and, and said, yeah, okay, I like that. Whereas I punish them severely by not spending my money on, you know, if they, if they displease me. Because my role as my role as consumer, let's talk about Cadburys then. So the Cadburys one again is, it was odd and what I couldn't work out, there's two ads, Simon, again, you set it up for us.'cause I saw the later one. 2021. Good luck girls.

Simon Moore:

So that's weird.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

That's really weird.

Simon Moore:

Yeah.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

you show me the other one, which was from the nineties. And I, I thought, okay, well it's again, is it a homage or is it just lazy? But just talk to me about it.

Simon Moore:

Well, there was a, there was an ad made for Cadburys at the end of the nineties where there's a player playing. He, he, he wins and a woman sort of wafts onto the, onto the pitch to celebrate with him whilst clutching a bar of cabbage, dairy, milk, and sort of evades security. And, and

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

with a policeman or an army official of some

Simon Moore:

it's, it's very, I think he's a policeman, but, you know, it's very odd. It's, but it's kind of like, I think it probably fits very well culturally with a kind of Bollywood cinema type moment where you're far more like to see that sort of slightly larger than life kind of semi danced thing that we, you, we, we still go, I don't, well. I still go, I don't really understand this. I quite like it, but I don't really understand it. And what they did in 2021 was they remade that with a women, with a woman, cricket player, and a man in the crowd eating the chocolate and then doing a similar kind of dance onto the pitch, which is quite funny to actually just go culturally, India has changed this much in that time. So that's kind of like quite significant thing for them. And we're acknowledging our own history and kind of having a bit of fun with it and playing with it. I, and I think if that's, we don't, I, I certainly don't know, but if that's got a lot of kind of legacy in India, like, I don't know, the shaken vac woman or something in the uk, you know, you kind of go like, that's sort of quite funny and, and playing with it is quite amusing thing to do.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

frame as well, isn't it? And you know,

Simon Moore:

Yeah,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

it's a

Simon Moore:

it's exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Well as I said, as I said, I think it's like the Ghostbusters approach here. Let's make exactly the same film. It's just reverse all the gender roles in it and, and that's what they did.

Mike Jakeman:

those two adverts are urge you dear listeners, to look in the show notes where Richard is linked to these two. Watch them in the correct order because these things will make a lot more sense. But anybody who's ever watched any of the classic Bollywood films, LA is the one that comes to mind see is familiar with the way that, cricket is depicted. There we'll see instant echoes in the original advert and the fact that this has been so lovingly framed by Frame recreated, including the, of security by the originally female, later male, partner of the player. I mean, it just done so well.

Simon Moore:

Right.

Mike Jakeman:

I spend two minutes of your.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Pepsi. So I watch these and again, it's, it's really interesting the football comparison. So the, again, the structure of it, they are, and there's a Coke, Pepsi thing in the same way as a Nike, Adidas thing around cricket. And you know, in India, as there is in football in Europe, you know, that's always in play. quite often it's on a, from a sort of sponsor strategy perspective, it's the sort of official versus Unofficial line. Adidas always have the official rights to the World Cups. Nike always ambush, or they always go via the players or the player route, and. Pepsi had a, a campaign called Nothing Official about it, which was a sort of to do with, and this is 96, so we're going back a long time. It was an Indian World Cup in, in the mid nineties, and it was, it was the sort of rebel position as opposed to, you know, the, the Coke official position. And, but again, structurally the ads mirror those of football. There is something going on. What I liked about them, again, it might be the, my distance from India and culturally under, you know, they understand there is a bit, the, the setup was something happens with a famous cricketer, whether it's Ms. Dony or and Kevin Peterson, or even Billy Bowden, the umpire was in there at one point.

Simon Moore:

Yeah,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

who, by the way, Simon, you won't but has a famous crooked finger.

Simon Moore:

I got that.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

He registered that I remember he hit his

Simon Moore:

Really brilliant.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

talks to the potentially the ego of the umpire. But that's the side issue. So you've got these, these setups with those famous players, which then get played out in a cricket

Simon Moore:

It's the karate kid, isn't it? It's the karate kid going, wipe on, wipe off, wipe on, wipe off. And then suddenly he's very good at defending in the karate match. That's the kind of, that's the premise of it, is take a, an everyday action. And actually, when it comes to the cricket match, now you are brilliant at this thing. So one of'em is like flicking a piece of cloth over his shoulder, isn't it? And then suddenly he's great, like tipping the ball behind him and stuff. So, you know, it's kind of like this, it it is pure, pure karate kid. But I, I thought it was brilliant actually. I think it's like of all of the campaigns we've, we've looked at, you know, jointly join us all. I thought that one was the one that sort of says it's very grounded in cricket. It is very grounded in the game. Only cricket could do it. I mean, it's sort of, you know, it, it, it sort of felt, it just felt really good. It sort of, it felt spot on for kind of like. Extolling the virtues of cricket and, and enjoying the game at the same time, and making it look exciting and dynamic.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Mike Pepsi or not Pepsi.

Mike Jakeman:

the, the slogan and the slogan of that one, that series was changed the game, wasn't it?

Simon Moore:

Yeah.

Mike Jakeman:

which I quite like the fact that this campaign hit on innovation as in cricket, is, which it, it has a much more sort of thrusting forward thinking reputation in India, England, Australia, but. As the setup for these adverts suggests using the everyday put through the brain of a cricketer leads to these crazy new shots and or even umpiring decisions. So I liked the fact that it's thinking of cricket as something that's alive and receptive to the world around it, as opposed to what are these tropes from this game that we can, we can dredge up to sell something else. I.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Yeah, I think it is sort of interesting comparing those Pepsi ads for the India market with Kit Kat and Yorkshire Tea to the English market, isn't it

Simon Moore:

Yeah. Yeah, I would just say as well to on the Pepsi

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

in India than it does to the English consumer?

Simon Moore:

on the, on the Pepsi changed that game one as well. They managed to work the product in on quite a few of them

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Yeah.

Simon Moore:

a way that didn't feel awful. And I thought that was sort of quite, quite smart as well because obviously, you know, if you're Nike, you've obviously got an immediate role in the game, whereas Pepsi, you really haven't. And so like I thought that was super good to be able to work in the product into it. But yes, to go back to your point on the on the issue of Yorkshire Tea and Kit Kat.

Mike Jakeman:

I'll do Kit

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

go on.

Mike Jakeman:

I'll do,

Simon Moore:

On. Yeah. Yeah. Go. Go for it. Go for it.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

it.

Mike Jakeman:

my single favorite of all of them. And the reason for that is just pure simplicity. So again, a quick prey of what happens. You are watching through a stump cam, which is a sort of instantly recognizable view from any, any sort of cricket fan. And you see the two batsman. It's the end of the over one of then comes down the pitch. They have a chat, you don't hear anything. They're in the middle of a, of a, what looks like a test match because they're in, or at least a first class game. There's been white, it looks realistic. And then one of them reaches down into their pad and pulls out a Kit Kat and then breaks off two of the four fingers, gives half of them to the other batter. And there's like a sort of half second where you see the Kit Kat wrapper and the slogan obviously is like, have a break because that's the existing strap line that's been there forever. And then they eat the Kit Kat and that's it. And the whole thing is done in about 20 seconds. And that that, but it's, it's shot in quite a leisurely way. And this is literally a break in play, which fits in perfectly with the, the brand's message. It feels authentic, completely authentic actually, which obviously is something that I've mentioned before. Bothers me when it's not. I loved it because it was so simple and it, it didn't feel like it was any, any heavy lifting having to be done by the advertisers to, to squeeze the product into cricket. Is so idiosyncratic that there are plenty of cricketers I've watched who could quite conceivably have a kit cap shoved down their pad. you know, or may have eaten plenty during the tea interval. I mean, it's, you know, it's just, it's entirely fitting of, of the game. It's idiosyncrasies. It was done. Very authentically. I was completely sold. I thought it was

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

I.

Simon Moore:

Should make some kit style pads, shouldn't they? That's,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

see you've gone too far. But, but no, the whole point, yeah, the whole, it would work actually. But the whole point I, I agree. I, it was weirdly authentic as in I was watching it and I'm a, you know, a cricket fan and I was trying to work out how they'd done it because actually normally it's so, obviously not real. But that felt like, you know, is that a game? Or, you know, have they actually done that? And I loved the, just the throwaway element of the branding, the red, know, and I wondered Simon, whether it's, so there's a question I had about can you only do subtle if you are really, really famous you are Kit Kat and the joke is embedded in that, and whether or not you could do that as a new, take a lot of balls to come in and something, or assume the audience would understand going on. You can.

Simon Moore:

I don't think you could do that if you were new. You've gotta built that heritage of have a break. I mean, and you've gotta, and you've gotta have a, a very recognizable product. Yeah. You can't, you couldn't just do, I mean, it'd be meaningless, wouldn't it? People would go, what? You know? I mean, it's, yeah. You've gotta be recognizable.

Mike Jakeman:

you just pulled out a Twix and a Twix, it would just be someone's eating

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Yeah.

Simon Moore:

Someone's eating a Twix, like Yeah. It wouldn't, you know, you have to have that kind of, should have gone to Specsavers kind of recognition moment that kind of makes it all kick in and, and work. Otherwise, I, I think people just wouldn't get it.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Okay. And the Tea, Tea,

Simon Moore:

Yeah.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

just explain this'cause you like this one. SI, I did a thing I remember. I'm always interested when they go behind the scenes and it's quite often the tea lady, and again, this goes to a very, I remember having meetings where people say, what about, and they go, they don't wanna do the star

Simon Moore:

Yeah, they wanna do the guy who paints the white lines.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

And it's quite often a sort of intel computer behind the scenes power from within

Simon Moore:

Yeah, yeah,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

And it ends up, we do this in football and cricket where a sort of elevation of the tea lady as the sort of

Simon Moore:

yeah,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

character to this,

Simon Moore:

yeah.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

is a in itself, a trope in itself. But why do you like this so much?'cause I sort

Simon Moore:

Well,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

didn't really.

Simon Moore:

oh yeah. Okay. So I like this be, I like this because I feel like it's got lots of legs and it, it's something you can sustain over quite a long period of time. You, you're absolute, like you are a hundred percent grounded in the brand. Because you're, you know, there, there is this kind of moment of stopping fatigue, but you can do something that's goes, it's basically they ran bakeoff basically for the tea moment. Join cricket. That's, it's, it's to one intent purposes. It's bakeoff, isn't it? But you know, it's kind of like, it's, it's exploring all those little every man stories. It's going behind the scenes. It's making cricket look more like it's an, it's not just the test match at Lords or the Oval. It's kind of like small little towns somewhere where people are pulling together and they've only got like a bit of a hot and, but they still managed to bring out the sandwiches and I think there's something quite nice, sort of quite whimsical and Mike Lish about it, you know, that kind of, it's got a bit of kind of joy to, again, it's got a little bit of joy to it, I think. Where, you know, and I think they did the right, they brought in Michael Vaughn, didn't they, as one of the judges and you know,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

That

Simon Moore:

it's just something that can run,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

it.

Simon Moore:

I had to do recording once with Michael, and he was very pleasant.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Okay.

Simon Moore:

So I I for that, I think it sort of, it, it had something which you could then run over a really long period of time. And as a campaign, they knew where they were going, they knew what the end goal was, and they've got lots of, when, when I did a, when I was at Miss Chief, we used to do a thing called Shed of the Year for for, it was great. Shed of the year was like, honestly, shed of the year was massive. We used to get a double page spread. The, the finalists would get a double page spread in the daily mail. I mean, that's, it was massive. Absolutely huge.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

a shed as well. I

Simon Moore:

Yeah. It was for, it was for Kuno and they sponsored it. And

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

a

Simon Moore:

and they didn't, they didn't, it was invented originally by this guy who'd set up a website to run it Who, who A website called Reader's Sheds. That I think is even funnier. But, but he'd run, he'd run this competition for a couple of years called Shed of the Ear, and then, and then Cuno picked it up and we sort of ran it for a long time and, and there was something really nice about kind of ordinary people and their kind of, you know, their sort of their quirkiness and their individuality. And I think that's probably what appealed to me about this, that.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

the, the, the thing a again, look, okay, let's just talk about this for a second. So the running in, you know, the, this is in the social media age, which makes me sound like my granddad. So in the platform era of TikTok and Twitter or X or whatever, you've got this phenomena of the advert, the TV ad as a thing. And it sits in the context of that in a, you know, in a way that, okay, I can sit and watch those Pepsi ads. I can see the Nike ads. They exist as a capsule in their own right. They're third classic 32nd TV ads in many ways. And that's the deal. You watch the ad and you know, whereas obviously now a 360, 24 7 always on campaign will, that will be just part of the inventory that is then created. And then you've got this sort of noises off going on. Go and make, go do a bake off competition, go to whatever, there's a PR element to it that the ad itself is blown up across earned media, traditional media. talk to me about this because it's not a cricket question, there is a sort of, does it ever work? Question that I've got my head, I can imagine this shit. Let's get on the, you know, the, let's get the likes up on whatever the out, you know, where, where we are pointing people to go and do a bake off of cricket ts better be something happening there.'cause the client's gonna be cross. If there isn't, we've created a sort of false promise. Just talk to me about that relationship between the classic creative idea as encapsulated in a TV ad and then all this other stuff that has to happen now as part of a sort of social campaign.

Simon Moore:

Well, I don't, I don't think it has to happen, but I think if you are looking to cut through what is a very busy, busy media, then having a campaign which can exist in lots of places, which can be written about as a story because it's a worthwhile story and also can run as A TVC and also as something experiential that people can go and do, and. And actually you can touch people in, lots of, you can hit people in lots of different touch points, then I think you have a much more successful campaign because you, you are, you are going across much broader media and that's almost the most success I've seen with anything has been that, where it's managed to kind of hit people in different places and therefore it starts, some of it starts to join up. It doesn't always join up, but certainly like when I've done that in the past, things like national trust and, and things like that, you know, it's sort of, it's really starting to ladder up because you're doing lots of different things dotted around.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

And what does the, might be being too cynical here,

Simon Moore:

Yeah, probably.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

does the, does. The experiential element. I mean, there is a sort of, is it real or is it a confection? So when I see, you know, oh, look at this experiential element to this campaign, and it's full of bright young things in a bar, drinking stuff of the client's, you know, product. Is that real or is that, does it have to be real or is that just another front that just has to be a box that has to be ticked?

Simon Moore:

I think if it's bright young things in a bar, it's probably heavily constructed. But I think experiential can be lots of stuff. You know, I did a, we did a lovely campaign years ago at Miss G for for the National Trust with John Cooper Clark and as part, and it was all about people's memories of the coast. And as part of that, we sort of built a giant shell that you could go into and hear all these sounds of the sea and then write down your own memories of the coast when you were a kid kind of on a, on a postcard and submit that to what actually was. So John Cooper Clark wrote the first half of a poem and then we canvas people's memories and all that kinda stuff. And they, then he wrote the second half of the poem and that, you know, that's not bright young things in a bar. That's people. Down on the South Bank or in Albert Square in Manchester, kind of wandering through and going, oh, what's this? And they go in there and they can sort of smell a sea and they can hear it roaring and all that kind, you know, and like, and they're having memories and I think that's quite a legitimate thing. And you know, there was, at the same time there were postcards at National Cross Properties where people could, without anything experiential, where they could just submit and there was a TVC and there was also, you know, there was like lots of different touch points. So that I, I think when it's that, I think it's genuine experiential. I think it works. But I actually, your take on this, Mike, because you must see probably hundreds of releases from PR companies attempting to try and persuade you to write something about their lackluster product that you probably immediately just delete. But you know, either way it'd be interested to hear your take on when brands are trying to influence

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Yeah, when it, when they're trying

Simon Moore:

the media.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

desk, that's always

Simon Moore:

Yeah. Yeah.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

that's always the job, isn't it? Monday, okay, so this morning we're gonna take the Kit Kat ad and we're gonna sell it to Mike Jakeman, the news editor at you know, a national newspaper. Oh, that's a difficult call.

Mike Jakeman:

Yeah, I mean, it, it, it so rarely works. The, the interest for me really is first of all, from a sport business point of view is which brands are interested in which sports. And sort of second to that, you know, is this real engagement or is this a sort of several month fad, which is again, is in, is interesting thinking about Nike in India, because I sort of, or Nike in cricket, I. Because the Nokta stuff, they're obviously trying very hard to be authentic. I mean, the, the pictures look great. The clothes look lovely. It feels like a realistic re-imagining of Caribbean cricket. You know, like the execution is very high as you would expect from Nike. But I can't help feel a little bit cynical about it because I suspect that in nine months time they will have a completely different campaign with another niche sport whose traditions they are, you know, drilling down. It'll be polo

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

going sailing.

Mike Jakeman:

yeah, yeah. So yeah, sailing is a good one. They'll find something in there that feels like it could be, and then form the basis of a capsule collection, that uses lots of words that Richard's uncomfortable using. And, and then, you know, then we'll move on. And so that, you know, therefore it's, it's using some recognition of cricket, reproducing it, quite lovingly, selling some premium level stuff and then moving on. And that slight, so there's a, there's a, the fact that this isn't, I mean, I'm not quite sure where Drake fits into this either. The fact this isn't like a, a long term commitment to the sport jars with me, but.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Yeah, I think, well, I think there's a couple of things about that. As you were, as you were saying, that there was a, it's the white. Of the, gear that they, they're all wearing in an, in a T 20 era. It was quite, actually, interesting'cause it's, it's obviously talks to test cricket and if they wanted to make that point,

Mike Jakeman:

Hmm.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

but, and test cricket Come again. I I was wondering about the different connotations it took back to the earlier bit of the conversation what Cricket does and Tess Cricket with its connotations of well, there's class sophistication, it's, there's heritage uh,

Simon Moore:

Colonialism. I don't, I think you can't, you can't get, well, the thing is that, you know, you look at cricket, right? And where's Cricket played? All the places that are ex British colonies. It's not,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Yeah,

Simon Moore:

know, it's not, it's not an accident. I mean, it's,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Empire.

Simon Moore:

yeah. It's empire. Yeah. Yeah.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Yeah. maybe that I hadn't thought about that with in terms of that difference between, you know, how Cricket has now evolved into these two

Simon Moore:

I.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

worlds of colored and white colored kits and white kits and sort of fast and slow and how that then is being So Nike have looked at that and said, okay, that's, we want to play in the, the other bit. And whether or not Tess Cricket, there was a question I had about what is cool, what does it mean and how they get to cricket because obviously that was a, that was a sort of strong element of that. what I don't want to get into what we think is cool, but it's, there's a, there's something there about that's territory that they want to play in. And it was just odd that they just to get there.

Mike Jakeman:

The, English brands and English advertising, we've talked about the Kit Kat, the Yorkshire Tea this nocta stuff is emphasizing the heritage, the tradition, the quirkiness, the, you know, the British humor, you know, the sort of slightly absurdist bits of cricket

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Yeah.

Mike Jakeman:

and all of the India stuff is, I mean, there's, there's humor and that too, as we saw with Cadbury's. But this is definitely modern athletic,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Yeah. Visceral, isn't it?

Mike Jakeman:

The visceral, yeah, that's a good word. Like, you know, the future is being played there. And then there's this heritage thing in England. I'm sure there will be examples of the other way around as well. But it, it does, this is one of the interesting things about cricket is that it, it does feel like it now has these two ident, two separate, you know, codes. Identities that look and feel quite different. And you know, this goes all the way back to the stuff we talked about the very beginning, Richard, about how difficult it is now for players to excel in a sporting sense in both of these two different Red Bull White Ball worlds. And it's.

Simon Moore:

I think the not to stuff has almost nothing to do with cricket, really. I think it's, it's fa it's a fashion, so has nothing to do with sport. It's a fashion thing. It could easily have been done by Chanel. They could have, I'm picking a name at random, but I mean, you know, it like, it, it doesn't really matter that it's like it was a sportswear brand doing it because almost anybody in fashion could have done it. Because fashion all the time goes, we're gonna take from this bit of culture here and we're gonna make our this season's collection all about this. And that's all I think they've done. I don't think it really says anything about sport in any way,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Okay.

Simon Moore:

but you know.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

I, okay.

Simon Moore:

I'd agree. I'd agree with the point about, you know, in Britain. Yeah. But I'm, and I go back to my original point'cause I think that's a class thing. I think it, I think fundamentally it comes down to a class thing and that's between, in India it's an every man's sport. And in the UK it isn't. And that's why it's treated as this kind of quirky kind of, you know, aren't we frightfully British type thing. That's the way it's treated. I'm not saying that's how cricket is, but that's how it's treated in here. Whereas in India, it's not as treated as something that a bunch of boats can play on the street.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

yeah, I agree. I agree with that. there. I'm gonna ask each of you just to finish off just very a one line, what's your, of the ones that we've got, and I, I might even. I'm gonna ask you a few, your favorites. Okay. Just gimme a one favorite from each, from our list. But I was almost gonna then say, oh, I'll put this out to the audience. I thought, oh no, I don't wanna do that. I can't be asked. I hate, I hate polls, you know, begging for engagement. I'm, I'm against that generally. I don't, I don't, I don't even like people listening. Mike, give me your favorite,

Mike Jakeman:

I,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

favorite ad

Mike Jakeman:

from listeners by far, actually. Because of the simplicity of the.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Simon

Simon Moore:

Change the game for me, but I also really like Kit Kat. But change the game, I think is is, is ticks all the boxes,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

and my one on the list we didn't even get to, which is, come on, Aussie. Come on. Which is the,

Simon Moore:

which is absolutely awful.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

was,

Simon Moore:

Unbearable.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

in its Australian ness, it

Simon Moore:

It's,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

it was there to celebrate or to, it was advertising the initial World Series cricket. initial breakaway league. You see how things, what things come around and go around

Simon Moore:

yeah.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

Kerry Packer Circus as it was Demeaningly called. My favorite. I'll put this in the newsletter. Have a listen, have a look, and you can feed back any uh, I'm talking to the listener at this point. No, you can feed back whatever it is that you you think and where, where we've missed what we've missed in terms of our list of great cricketing ideas. Right. Edge meets the big idea. I think we got there. I really enjoyed doing that. Thank you very

Simon Moore:

Great.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner:

and Simon Moore award-winning Simon Moore. Thank you very much.

Simon Moore:

Thank you.