not an influencer I am a practitioner in
fact my influence is up till the
solitary like that my mother gives my
Facebook post but apart from that I’m
not an influencer and I work with brands
to help them leverage sport better
rather than talking about stats and
figures and telling you how toshin the
fan engages with his sport team more
than Toshi and the consumer engaged with
his brand I thought that why don’t we
have an esoteric dialogue about sport
and the influence that sport has so just
to define the term influencer and across
many many definition that I went through
the one that I found was most apt to the
conversation that we want to have today
is the ability to shape collective
mindsets taking from that I just want to
open with a code from an idol of mine
which is Nelson Mandela
he said that sport has the power to
change the world it has the power to
inspire and it has the power to unite
people in a way that little else does
sport speaks to the youth in a language
that they understand and sport can
create hope where there was only once
despair it’s a very powerful statement
and I want to share with you three
stories of how sport has directly
impacted Society nothing Mandela made
that coat because he actually used sport
if we go back to 1995 South Africa the
country I was just opening its doors to
international relations because of the
because of the dismantling of the
apartheid regime in 95 they held the
Rugby World Cup a year prior Nelson
Mandela was elected president the unique
aspect about rugby is that it holds a
very close affinity with the rich
minority white Africana and the South
African rugby team had immense support
from them however it seemed to alienate
the rest of the population so when the
Rugby World Cup was actually
held in South Africa there was a lot of
confusion the country was quite
literally on this brink of Civil War
and the first match was played and it’s
very remarkable to see what happened
when you had the rich white minority
Africana on one side of the stadium
waving the old South African flag the
one that represented the racist
apartheid regime and everyone else from
the country South Africans supporting
the opposition country just let that
sink in in your own country your support
in your opposition and over the course
of the next few weeks something very
remarkable happened South Africa South
Africa kept on winning and they got to
the final against New Zealand the big
difference between the final against New
Zealand and the very first match is that
the entire country whether you are black
white South African Indian mixed race
was in the stadium supporting the new
South Africa what they dubbed the
rainbow nation Nelson Mandela you sport
to unite a broken country if we
fast-forward to 2007 Iraq is embroiled
in a devastating and brutal war and
whilst the streets of Baghdad ax being
bombed the Iraqi football team is
playing the AFC Cup so the AFC Cup is
Asia’s version of the euros and again
something magical happens Iraq gets the
final against Saudi Arabia which they
win and the same streets that people
were scared to walk on and was scared to
even tread on were filled with children
and women and communities celebrating
the victory of their country
that’s what sport can do sport can shine
light in the darkest of moments if we
bring this closer to a home that
phenomenal athlete on screen her name is
Ronnie Ron Paul at the age of 15 she
made her debut for the Indian hockey
team and she’s considered a monster top
five forwards in the world her father is
a handcart puller in Haryana what’s
truly remarkable about Ronnie Ron Paul
is that in 2015 there was a can
census that was released at in December
2015 which said that the gender ratio in
Haryana had crossed 900 for the first
time in over a decade one of the reasons
why that was so is because families were
looking up to players like Ronnie Ron
Paul players like Saina Nehwal players
like Sir Sakshi Malik and was saying you
know what I will have a daughter qk egg
din marry Beatty biryani ho sakta the
ability to dismantle a social mindset
that is what sport has but why does
sport influence us a mentor of mine gave
me broke it down into two fundamental
reasons number one identifiability we
everyone is interested in knowing the
physical limits of our mind and body we
connect with athletes because they show
us the outer limit of our species so
when mr. bolt runs a 100 meters in 9.5
eight seconds we are all left in awe the
second reason is that we are we all have
battling instincts and the desire to
affiliate and as we tend to move towards
a nuclear to a nuclear living condition
we need to feed this desire and teams
and affiliations do that and it’s a very
very powerful bond so how do how do we
as marketers and brand custodians
leverage this connection sign Bharat
Kohli the last five years of me being in
in this industry I’ve learned I’ve been
exposed to a few things and I wanted to
share those things with you in three
short three short topics topic number
one to break the myopic view that we all
have of what actually defines what an
influencer is is an influence as someone
that just happens to have a large number
of Twitter followers as a blue mark on
Facebook and Instagram that gets crazy
views and on YouTube is it something far
more profound
kalimera story was the first woman from
India to ever win an Olympic medal she
did not paved
away for female athletes because when
she was there there was no road even dug
up she quite literally dug a road and
set a foundation which many other female
champions after her have followed people
like sine I never marry calm they’ve all
considered her and influenced or because
of what she achieved to break barriers
she has 361 followers on Twitter are we
to say that she’s not an influencer even
though the impact that she has had on
ground is far more substantial number
two authenticity the buzzword for us as
marketers this content what’s a content
marketing strategy how are we going to
tell stories what is the content I’m
going to use on our social media
platforms and most often than not when I
speaking to my clients and when I’m
speaking to different brands they all
keep saying you know what we want
something truly authentic we want
something that connects with the
audience this is where I believe sport
has the answer
Swapna Berman is India’s best about lead
at the age of 17 she finished fifth at
the Asian Games in Incheon in 2017 she
won the gold in a battle on in boob
nature at the Asian Athletics
Championships Swapna is from a very
humble background in West Bengal and her
dad has been in bed Ray has been on bed
rest ever since she was young her mother
actually used to cycle her from her
house to the size Center just so she
could train that’s not even the most
remarkable thing the remarkable thing is
Swapna was born with six toes on each
foot every single pair of shoes that she
wore were either too tight or too loose
she could not stand she can’t stand long
enough because it causes her discomfort
yet she is the best that our country has
produced
she is someone who’s focused on
representing India at the Tokyo 2020
Olympics that is a story of overcoming
adversity that is a story that actually
she has no Twitter base she has no
Facebook followers but we do our brands
do imagine if we took her story and told
it to the world how we could communicate
our values and what we stand for through
what she has achieved number three the
multiplier effect everyone I believe
must know this man his gopis pinnacle of
gopis career came in 2001 when he won
the All England bad wins championships
after that Gopi thought how can I give
back to sport what can I do and he went
back to his hometown Hyderabad and set
up an academy and he said I believe that
the flaw in the Indian sporting
ecosystem is how we coach our athletes
so he went and he created an entire
pedagogy of which he approved off and
started coaching badminton players here
we are a decade later and we have six
Indian men in the top 50 of the
badminton rankings five of them coach
five of them have been coached at gopis
Academy and still trained they’re the
two women who and the top ten both have
been coached by Gopi he is an influencer
because every day thousands of parents
write to him and say so please allow my
child to come and enroll in your academy
please can you coach my child the
question that we must ask ourselves as
brand custodians is how do we engage
with someone like a Gopi someone who can
shape a destiny of an entire community
what can we do and what can we do
through him to get our brand
communication across so once again why
the sport influenced us sport influences
us and I genuinely believe this because
when India wins the World Cup
we aren’t male or female we aren’t Hindu
or Muslim
we’re not Punjabi or Tamil Sport
influences us because even if we
the worst possible week of our life and
our team wins on Saturday we are static
sport influences us because even if our
child has been born today and Manchester
United loses we are miserable Sport
inspires us and Nike put it very
eloquently here because it allows us to
find our own greatness it tells us that
it teaches us that it’s not about what
we can’t do but what we can actually do
and it gives us the ability to break
perception and actually prove the
naysayers wrong why the sport influenced
us sport influences us because it’s
powerful because it’s emotional and
because it’s emotional it’s very very
powerful and we as brand custodians have
to harness this emotional equity and
connect with our consumers this is why I
believe sport is amongst the best
influences we have at our disposal thank you