VODAFONE / GETTING AWAY WITH IT

Vodafone has already done the most useful thing it can to encourage more people to watch the cricket and promote the brand's sponsorship and that is by creating the Cricket LIVE app itself, a handy companion for any hard-core cricket fan.

The brand's vBooks are a sweet idea, but in fact they are branded fun masquerading as branded utility. Will anyone actually get away with pretending to read about crustaceans while they are in fact watching the cricket? Probably not. But what Vodafone has done here is put itself firmly on the side of the cricket fan by recognising that this person's biggest problem is getting the chance to watch the sport in peace at home or at work. In that sense the brand has done what Volkswagen's Side Assist campaign did with its webcam software that enabled people to slack off at work by alerting them when their boss was behind them, or Diesel did with its technology that disguised Facebook as a spreadsheet. Vodafone here is helping generate goodwill for its brand among cricket fans in a similar fashion.

Using famous cricketers was a good way of sweating the brand's sponsorship assets in a fun and cheeky way, but at the moment it's too early to see whether these videos will take off with fans. The main campaign ad starring Australian captain Michael Clarke has picked up almost 6,000 YouTube views in a couple of days while the other videos have only picked up a few hundred each.