It was Yuvraj Singh’s idea to recount the recent ups and downs of his life, including his sudden illness, in the latest ad campaign of financial services company Birla Sun Life Insurance. The cricketer even flew down to India three weeks ago to change the word “injury” to “health problems” and added a phrase to the original tag-line in the voice-over of the new series.

Yuvraj, who won the Man of the Series and was instrumental in India winning the cricket World Cup in April last year, was injured and out of the team when the ad was originally shot in October-November 2011. “He mentioned once that he did not get any time to enjoy the moment because of the looming IPL,” recounts Ajay Kakar, chief marketing officer, financial services, Aditya Birla Group. Soon after the IPL, he fell ill and was eased out of the team.

Birla Sun Life had originally filmed a series with Yuvraj and Virender Sehwag in 2009-10 with the power of bat as the theme. In 2011, however, the company only signed Yuvraj for two years as its “philosophy ambassador” in August. A failing Yuvraj might have appeared a bad bet for a brand but the company feels he was just the right person to endorse what the company sold — the fear of unknown. According to one of Yuvraj’s managers who worked on the campaign, it was Yuvraj’s idea to narrate the sudden turn of events in his real life in the new series that was released last week.

“Recounting his triumph and then losing it all to factors out of his control was his idea. He even changed the original script of the ad and added the phrase ‘to baat to wahin aa gayee na’ to the original tagline — jab tak balla chal raha hai, tab tak thaath hain...jab balla nahin chalega to...” — says Kakar.

Timed to perfection?

Kakar and JWT, the agency that worked on the campaign, refute insinuations that they timed the ad with the cricketer’s illness and are trying to cash in on. “It was planned in September and shot in October-November,” says Nandita Chalam, vice president and executive creative director, JWT.