Won’t Give It Back - One Ad & More Than A Billion People

A poorly conceived ad campaign 

It felt like a billion hearts have broken on one single day. There is a lot of disappointment in the Indian sub-continent with Indian team losing to Australia in the World Cup semi-final match at Sydney yesterday by 95 runs. There are plenty of unwanted jokes(some of them crude) doing the rounds in social media especially on one film actress and her cricketing boyfriend who scored just one run of 13 balls at a critical time when India needed his batting badly. The credit for such social media bashing of these two personalities must be partly given to Star Sports and their ad campaign. 

The team had an unstoppable run till the semi-final but fell short of own expectations. While it is very normal to lose or win in a match the ad ‘Won’t Give It Back’ made the team to ‘lose’ the real match and the cup even before it all started.

The ad made by Lowe Lintas for their client Star Sports is nothing but a mockery of the spirit of sportsmanship. No sports person would walk into an arena to lose but none would speak about trophies or show possessiveness on such cups, for the simple reason that, they wouldn’t want to appear arrogant. This ad reflects the arrogance of the creators and not necessarily that of the players or the fans. By virtue of being an international channel, by airing the ad, they have temporarily taken the viewers (read fans) and players into a false sense of ownership of the cup. The cup belongs to those who play well. Simply saying ‘we won’t give it back’ doesn’t boost the positive spirit of the players. The ad campaign claims to ‘connect’ with the youth in their language and also to be ‘reflecting’ their attitude but Lowe Lintas and Star Sports got them excited in a wrong way. We can understand when a small kid says ‘I won’t give it back’ about a toy. But what about a cricketing nation and its billion fans, can they afford to say like that about a World Cup that they won in 2011? What message does it give? That of a small kid, isn’t it?

By creating such an ad, the agency has done more harm to the young generation, Team India and also to the overall image of India as a nation. They have misled  the whole nation with a wrong concept in the process of increasing their TRPs. Young India doesn’t have the attitude to ‘keep’ ‘things’, instead they have the attitude to work hard and smart to do well in life. The ad doesn’t exactly reflect what it claims because the makers ‘assumed’ the attitude of the young instead of doing a proper research to properly assess the mood and attitude prevailing in the run up to the World Cup.

The campaign should have been on the lines of ‘Will Make It Again’ or ‘We Have It In Us’ or ‘We Can Do It Again’ etc., which tend to reflect positive action on the field and not ‘Won’t Give It Back’ which reflects more of possessiveness like that of a kid than the action of real heroes (which our players indeed are). They did a fantastic job as a team under the leadership of M S Dhoni, the Captain Cool.

Victory or defeat in a game and profit or loss in business is common. In a game trophies are either lost or won and in business money is either lost or gained but to say that ‘won’t give it back’ smacks of immaturity because nobody can keep anything forever but anybody can keep his/her spirit and enthusiasm to continue forever, whether in game or in life. It is not Team India that lost but the ad that made it appeared to have lost. The spirit of the game is more important than ‘giving’ a cup or ‘bringing’ a cup. The best team always wins but all best teams need not always win because ONE means ONLY ONE and there cannot be TWO winners in such a game.

Let us hope that at least for CWC 2019, we would not be exposed to such mindless, misleading, ill-conceived ads and Team India makes it to the top to bring the cup back home.