MUMBAI: The biggest cricketing extravaganza - Indian Premiere League - is just a couple of days away and the official broadcaster Sony Max and Six is going all out (literally) to get the fans jumping and dancing.

Kicking off the on-ground activities, the network rolled out its ‘Bulaava Express’, which is an open air bus, on the streets of Mumbai on Sunday carting along Kandivali, Carter road, Worli Sea face and Marine Drive.

This unique open air bus is designed to capture the imagination of the citizens with a host of entertaining and unique activities. Be it the impromptu ‘buckram ka chukrum’ which quizzed people on their knowledge of the tournament or ‘Bulaava Bahana’ which mandated fans to confess which ‘bulaava’ they have used to watch the Pepsi IPL, the activities left the audiences hungry for more. The journey finally ended with the specially created energetic ‘Buckram dance’ which left the people spellbound.

Speaking on the occasion, Sony Max VP marketing Vaishali Sharma says: “Bulaava Express is the perfect initiative to get the people excited about the tournament. Cricket fans were exuberant about being a part of this activity. The overwhelming response and enthusiasm of the crowd has encouraged us to take the fun and excitement to more locations.”

The ‘Bulaava Express’ will tour the country across 13 cities like Delhi, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Lucknow, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Chennai, Nashik, Indore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Nagpur between April and May creating euphoria for Pepsi IPL 2014. Sony Max & Six have created this unique initiative especially for the followers of the grand spectacle of Pepsi IPL.

Apart from the ‘Bulaava Express’, plans are afoot for mall activations as well. Activities at the mall will include the ‘Buckram Dance’- A unique buckram dance done by a troupe which popularizes the campaign track and the “buckram move”, ‘Buckram ka Chukrum’- fun games/IPL based trivia to popularise the Buckram, ‘Buckram Hunt’ and ‘Bulaava Bahaana’.

The mall activation will also see a unique concept which is called ‘Buckram pe Buckram’. “This will be a giant size collar cut out of about 10 feet, here we will encourage people to come and write small notes saying “Iss baar kaunsi team ka bulaava aya hai” and stick it on the huge cut out,” Sharma explains.

Storyboard Brandcom has been appointed to look after the OOH campaign for the broadcaster with the campaign spread across 97 cities in 500 sites. WATConsult is handling the digital and social marketing for the IPL. This time around the marketing spends have seen a spike of nearly 12-15 per cent as against last year by Sony.

The broadcaster also intends to target the heartland by reaching out to more than 400 LC1 towns over the next month and a half with ‘Remote ka bulaava’. “The idea is to really get people even in the smaller towns hooked onto the game,” says Sharma. “We will also be going door to door and conducting quizzes and handing out merchandise to the winners.”

This time around, with the help of WATConsult, the broadcaster has also launched an app that will enable the fans to catch the match action on their mobiles and further build the engagement.

“The message we are sending out through the campaign is very clear, the call for the IPL brings out the attitude among the fans and translates into them running to catch the live match action from wherever they are,” Sharma expounds.

The broadcaster is leaving no stone unturned in pushing its biggest property through its network. It has been running the broadcast campaign for over a couple of weeks now and will carry it on for another four weeks, spread across 95 channels.

On print, the broadcaster has bought spots across leading dailies like; Times of India, Nav Bharat Times, Vijay Karnataka, Dainik Saamana,  Daily Thanthi, The Hindu, Vijayavani, Deccan Chronicle, Saakshi, Eenadu, Dainik Bhaskar, Divya Bhaskar, Divya Marathi, Dainik Jagran, Amar Ujala, Gujarat Samachar, Lokmat, Ajit, Anand Bazaar Patrika, among others.

The Radio campaign is spread over two weeks across 11 stations, the broadcaster has a special plan for addressing LC1 markets where it will be playing the spots on air.

“We have done some extremely interesting innovations with Radio Mirchi this year; Red FM, Big FM and Fever will also be promoting the campaign in a big way via contents and other interesting integrations,” reveals Sharma.