Case Study: rebel – Cricket’s Got a New Home
Sorry, Lords. We’ll take it from here.
Sorry, Lords. We’ll take it from here.
Cricket may have been born in England, but let’s face it—these days, it dances better in a sari, hits harder under a southern sun, and sounds less like cucumber sandwiches and more like sixes and celebrations.
Cricket’s Got a New Home was a tongue-in-cheek repositioning campaign for rebel—designed to claim emotional and cultural ownership of the modern game. The idea was simple: contrast the cricket of old with the cricket of now.
We opened on two Pommie gents in their whites. Flat caps, mild chatter, a bland exchange about the weather. A voiceover solemnly intones: "Ah yes, cricket. A quintessentially English game." It’s all very proper. Very polite. Very... beige.
Then: boom.
Cut to Aussies cheering mid-match. Indians twirling in full Bollywood celebration. Sri Lankans, West Indians, Pakistanis—the world in colour, in motion, in cricket ecstasy. Bat flips. Crowd roars. Face paint. Fireworks.
An Aussie voiceover breaks through the pomp:
“Nah… cricket’s got a new home.”
“Nah… cricket’s got a new home.”
That home? rebel—where cricket lives loud, lives proud, and lives now.
This was more than a promo—it was a culture grab. We weren’t just selling bats and balls. We were claiming relevance. By playing off the dusty, outdated rituals of the old cricketing world, we positioned rebel as the retailer that gets the modern fan—and the modern player.
Visually, the campaign was dynamic and multicultural, blending broadcast footage with bespoke content and stylised celebration sequences. Tonally, it nailed that Amart-meets-rebel sweet spot: irreverent, inclusive, and unmistakably Aussie.
From a behavioural science angle, the campaign used contrast framing, identity alignment, and cultural priming. It made the old feel irrelevant and the new feel inevitable—then positioned rebel as the beating heart of that shift.
Results:
34% increase in cricket category sales YoY across rebel stores
2.1M video views across social, broadcast, and digital
28% lift in unaided brand association with “where to buy cricket gear”
Significant uptake in multicultural campaign engagement (especially Indian-Australian segments)
Strong performance in brand tracking: “modern,” “fun,” and “relevant” all scored above benchmark
Why it worked:
Because it reframed cricket not as heritage, but as here. Cricket’s Got a New Home was a bat-swinging, boundary-clearing reminder that tradition is nice—but energy is better. And at rebel, the game’s only just getting started.