Lalit Modi
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The Challenge
To improve the personal reputation of Indian entrepreneur Lalit Modi, architect and Commissioner of the Indian Premier League of Cricket (IPL), following serious allegations of financial impropriety. Mr Modi had propelled the IPL into one of the most valuable sports leagues in the world, worth more than $4bn, but he was suspended in April 2010 when claims of alleged wrongdoing were made public. There was a clamour – especially in India – to hear Lalit Modi’s side of the story. Personal security concerns which prohibited him travelling to his homeland from his temporary base in London added to the challenge of the most effective manner in which to convey Lalit Modi’s story.
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The Big Idea
We recommended that we ‘break the mould’ with a non-traditional approach to addressing different media channels. We planned, designed and built Lalit Modi’s own media channel by harnessing the full power of the internet and social media to tell his story. The intent was that when executed we would generate widespread coverage in the traditional mainstream media outlets.
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Mobilisation
We commissioned respected former BBC Sports Editor and business correspondent Mihir Bose to interview Lalit Modi in an uncompromising and robust manner. We then launched the footage on YouTube simultaneously with Mr Modi’s personal website. We harnessed the strength of Lalit Modi’s Twitter account with his 240,000 followers to promote our activity and created a Facebook page to push the message out as far as possible.
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The Result
Within 30 minutes of our efforts going ‘live’ more than 130 TV stations in India had played excerpts from Lalit Modi’s interview with two national stations running the whole piece in its entirety. More than 170 newspaper articles based on the Bose interview were published with stories appearing in India, Australia, the UK, South Africa and the USA. More than 5,000 Tweets and Retweets of our teaser messages caused Modi’s followers to grow by 25,000. Within 18 hours of its launch the LalitKModi Channel was the 29th most viewed in India, out of several thousands available, attracting nearly 10,000 views on day one.
