Together #WePlayStrong
Proving that girls' football is kick 🍑
Research proves that football makes girls stronger and more confident. Yet, due to the stigma attached to girls’ football, many girls stop playing at the age that they need confidence the most.
Our challenge: overcome that stigma, and grow the game so that it's the most popular sport for girls across Europe.
We created a truly 360 socially led campaign designed to reach girls across Europe - a campaign that is still running to this day worldwide.
Built from the girl up, not the brand down
Our campaign - initially designed as a one year launch and then extended into a multi-year endeavor - was designed to speak to teens where they wanted to be. It was socially-led, with TV, print, and in-game support.
In the course of a three week, multi-national shoot, we developed a year's worth of video content: over 20 content films as well as a launch film as well as multiple TVCs.
But that's not all we made. From GIFs on Giphy, to content films that live on social media, to an iMessenger sticker pack, the campaign is optimised for the platforms the girls were spending their time on and provides a range of creative touchpoints for them to enjoy. We even went live in AR too (back in 2017, that was a pretty big deal).
Inviting girls everywhere to come play
We filmed with over a hundred real footballers of varying ages; some who played just for fun, and some who were pros. They became the faces of what girls’ football can look like, welcoming more girls into the game on their own terms.
We got the results… and then kept going
We launched to our girls and to the world on TV during the half-times of both the Womens' and Mens' Champions League Finals (the latter of which typically has 160 million+ viewers worldwide).
In the first three months, we had over 35 million campaign views, gained 25k followers from scratch, and had over 1.02 billion impressions, all without traditional above the line media spend. Awards for the first phase of the campaign include a Bronze Cannes Lion and Shortlist in Multi-Platform Social, as well as a Silver at the Kinsale Sharks and a Bronze LIA.
So why stop there? The campaign continued, bringing on celeb ambassadors including Rita Ora and later Millie Bobby Brown. Ora even lent her voice to a follow up film set to a poem I wrote for the launch of the campaign (a surreal turn of events indeed)!
