Hippo brings out the love for food in Indian cricket fans with ‘Indian Food League’

The ‘Indian Food League’ created by Creativeland Asia is an online activity in which Hippo asks T-20 fans to support their regional teams by supporting their regional dishes.

The endearing and loving hunger fighter, Hippo, is back this domestic Twenty-Twenty season with the Indian Food League (IFL). The campaign is a crowd-sourced activity that caters to the cricket fan’s love for snacking and eating, while they watch their teams fight it out every evening. The IFL ultimately hopes to tap into every Indian’s latent desire to voice their humorous opinions. Talking cricket online has become engrained in every cricket lover’s match-day rituals. And by bringing food to this already heated and opinionated mix, Hippo has hit on a very successful recipe.

On  the campaign Nadia Chauhan, Joint Managing Director and CMO Parle Agro said, “With so many people conversing on social sites, Hippo has created the Indian Food League as a medium to interact with and engage its consumers on the social media platform during the cricket season. Needless to say, cricket has a large fan following in India. Friends and families watch a match together at home or a pub and other such places. Snacking is a huge part of such occasions and Hippo IFL is targeted at this consumer pattern.”

“Today, social media is one of the most influential and emerging channels of communication. Hippo’s previous campaign on Twitter to track inventory was a huge success. This further encouraged Parle Agro to engage interactively with its consumers on the same platform. What’s more fascinating is that while brands spend millions of dollars on conventional media to draw consumers’ attention during this season, Hippo is doing the same at a negligible cost through social media,” she added.

Commenting on the campaign, Anu Joseph, Executive Creative Director, Creativeland Asia, said, “Hippo is constantly looking for opportunities to talk about food. He, in fact, looks at the world only in terms of hunger and food. So, a ‘Mumbai Vs Bangalore’ match for Hippo is a match between Kanda Poha and Masala Dosa. So, whoever wins, at the end of the day, hunger loses.”

The IFL comprises of nine regional teams symbolised by the region’s most popular dishes, with Chennai being represented by ‘Idli Sambhar’, Mumbai by ‘Pav Bhaji’ and Delhi by ‘Papdi Chaat’. Other dishes include ‘Kanda Poha’, ‘Aloo Paratha’, ‘Daal Baati’, ‘Masala Dosa’, ‘Roshogolla’, ‘Dum Biryani’, representing the regions Pune, Punjab, Rajasthan, Bangalore, Kolkata and Hyderabad respectively.

The home of the activity is www.hippofighthunger.com/ifl, a microsite where Hippo puts up a ‘Today’s Special’ poster daily, giving his unique and quirky take on the day’s food match-up. Each ‘Today’s Special’ also mirrors the daily IPL schedule. Fans can visit the micro-site and share their fun and quirky takes on which dish will top and why. The site also gives fans the chance to make and share their own fun Today’s Specials, through their social network accounts. Hippo offers the day’s best comment a Hippo Bean Bag thus making snacking while watching cricket a lot more fun.