Star India cricketer and PUMA Brand Ambassador Virat Kohli received praise from former South African maestro Jonty Rhodes for his diving skills when he announced the unique AI-led campaign called PUMA DIVE through social media on Friday. Sharing an image of himself diving on X, Virat Kohli invited fans to rate it, posting, "Think this definitely is a 100% score. What do you guys think? #PUMADive."
The top batter received applause from one of the best fielders of all-time Jonty Rodhes, who replied, "Nice one, Virat! It all started with a dive for me too. Reminiscing some special memories. Hope you make some this year. Not against us though #PUMADive." As part of his reply to Virat, Jonty also posted a diving image of himself from a historic game in the year 1992.
Virat's fans in the past have often compared his iconic dives on the pitch to PUMA's leaping cat logo, creating content that has gone viral several times. This season, PUMA has taken the fans' love for spotting the cat and created a platform to reward them for every image of a dive that they upload on X (formerly Twitter).
India all-rounder Yuvraj Singh dived into the conversation, “The legend Jonty Singh @JontyRhodes8 . Learnt a dive or two from you growing up #PUMADive.”
India football veteran Sunil Chhetri then joined the banter challenging Virat.
Under the two-month-long PUMA Dive campaign, participants will be invited to upload images of the best dives in everyday life – be it swimming, sky diving, artists at concerts, to even self-participation at PUMA's offline events at malls and stores this season with hashtag PUMADive. With #PUMADive, the brand promises that once you see the dive, you can't unsee it!
What makes PUMA DIVE unique is the integration of generative AI, which will assess the accuracy of each dive in relation to the PUMA's iconic leaping cat logo, in under a minute. The closer a participant's image of a dive matches the PUMA logo, the greater the reward they receive.