Ogilvy has signed on with the Madhya Pradesh sports department to pump up an awareness drive about the sports centres or the Grameen Yuva Kendras among the villagers. But, for Ogilvy, the drive stretches beyond the villages into the ears of the industry.
"These are the rail roads for our future clients' campaigns. So we are nursing this network of sports centres with that intent," says Ogilvy president Anurag Gupta.
While the beginning has been made in Madhya Pradesh, neighbouring state Rajasthan has also expressed its wish to replicate the network to nurture sports talent in villages.
The sports centres came up in Madhya Pradesh thanks to an initiative two years ago by the then sport minister, Yasodhara Scindia, and is meant to identify sporting talent in villages, blocks and then channel them to the districts onward to the 13 training academies in the state.
At Barai block in Gwalior, the team of contract workers hired by Ogilvy have done with painting the walls in all the 60 surrounding villages in the block, taking mobile yatras about the kendras.
"We will now move on to the next block in the district,'' says Vidya Sagar Pandey, the main campaigner who got in the crowd of students from surrounding villages to the kendra this week at a much publicised re-launch of the youth centre.
It was a centre started two years ago by the Government with a youth coordinator who has been drawing a salary of 1,700 for the past one year and a half. But no one had quite noticed it. And so, the Government decided to get Ogilvy in.
Says Sanjay Chaudhury, the IPS officer who heads the sports department in the state: "We floated tenders for communication and mass contact programmes and O&M was successful. Chaudhury says that Rajasthan is also planning to replicate the network.Ogilvy has been assigned the task of doing pilot projects in 21 tribal blocks.
Says Gupta: "My aim is to show private companies how it is attractive as a channel for the market. He looks at the Yuva Kendra Sanchalak as a salesman as much as a sportsman. A cell phone company can create a package through a sanhalak as to how a cell phone changes life," says Gupta about the new market territory in his hands.
He says that FMCG companies and Arcelor Mittal have expressed interest. While the latter was interested in sponsoring young sporting talent, the former could bring in products through this network, he says.
The company has spent Rs 4 crore (Rs 40 million) on the awareness campaign so far, says Gupta whose company targets reaching out to 10,000 new villages every year through various marketing campaigns across the country.
At Barai, Dharmendra Sharma the district coordinator or the block sanchalak manning the grameen yuva kendra is yet to start sporting activities in the playground under the kendra. However, he has carried out his first interaction with village youth at the re-launch with young boys coming and giving their names for future sports activities.
However Sharma does not accept the possibility of sportsmen like him being used as salesmen. "We are not here to be salesmen. We are sportsmen. I am a volleyball player and all the other coaches are also players who were unemployed and now will get this position. But if any company approaches the kendras for pushing products, then the state sports department will not allow it. We also won't accept it," he says.
The department is however using the kendras as contact points for youth welfare, he says. We will inform the people about employment and other opportunities as and when communicated by the Government, he says. Says Gupta: "Our idea is just an extension of this. These will be windows to the world and the market."