Durex has been following the Indian cricket team around the country with billboards written for one city at a time. Each board plays on the name or the reputation of the city hosting the match, and each one only makes sense in that city during the week of its game. In Indore, it read “Some games are best played INDORE(S).”
A Series That Kept Moving
The West Indies’ T20 tour of India moved fast. The 5 matches were played in 5 cities over 12 days, starting in Lucknow on October 6 and moving through Ranchi, Indore and Hyderabad before the final game in Bengaluru on October 17.
That schedule gave Durex a new audience every few days. Each host city filled up with fans, local coverage and match day traffic, and the brand put a board in front of them that spoke only to them.
What Indore Read
Indore hosted the third match on October 11. India beat the West Indies by 14 runs that night to take a 2 to 1 series lead.
The billboard turned the city’s name into a pun on “indoors.” “Some games are best played INDORE(S)” works on two levels. The game everyone in town was talking about was being played under floodlights. Durex had a different one in mind.
Bengaluru’s Longest Innings
Bengaluru got the final match on October 17, and its board went after the one thing every resident complains about. It aimed the city’s notorious traffic and suggested the innings should last just as long.
The joke depends entirely on local knowledge. Outside Bengaluru, it is a line about traffic. Inside the city, it is a line about something everyone has sat through.
Three Words in Hyderabad
Hyderabad hosted the fourth match on October 14 and got the shortest board of the series, 3 words and a wink. The format stayed the same, with the city’s name or character doing the work and cricket supplying the double meaning.
Why a Condom Brand Talks Cricket
Cricket is the biggest stage in Indian advertising, but a condom brand has few ways onto it. Since 2017, Indian TV channels have been told to air condom ads only between 10pm and 6am, which rules out most live match broadcasts.
Durex works around that by borrowing the game’s vocabulary. Innings, extra time, playing well and the rest of the commentary language already carry a second meaning, and the audience fills it in without being told.
The brand has done this for a decade. In 2016, during the T20 World Cup, Durex India and agency iContract launched the #D20 Dictionary, which redefined cricket terms such as doosra and silly point as bedroom slang. Before the 2025 IPL final between Royal Challengers Bengaluru and Punjab Kings, 2 teams that had never won the title, Durex posted “18 years. 2 virgins. Who will get lucky tonight?”
Why the Boards Travelled
The city boards take that habit offline and make it narrower. Most brands run a single creative everywhere for a month because it is cheaper to produce. Durex paid for a separate version in each host city and timed each one to that city’s match week.
The narrowness is what made people stop. A billboard that names your city and makes a joke about it is worth a photo, and photos of the boards have travelled far further on Instagram than any flyover site could take them on its own.
Campaign Name: Not mentioned
Agency Name: Not mentioned
Brand Name: Durex India (Reckitt)
Location: Indore, Hyderabad and Bengaluru, India (October 2026, during the India vs West Indies T20 series)
