Results and Effectiveness

Search results for Fernando Torres from Malaysia soared during campaign period. We successfully stole the limelight from the official sponsor, Malaysia spiked to the fourth country to search “Nike Football” most globally. Search numbers were almost double compared to “Adidas Football”. The media took notice and featured the site in full page-full colour in the nation’s leading English paper and trade magazine. The construction YouTube video attracted over 1.000 views within the first week. The site captivated an estimated of over 1.9 million passer-bys along the LDP highway and 1-Utama’s 2.2 million visitors.

Creative Execution

To outshine the global sponsor, we gave football fans something big to talk about. Something so big they will remember for life. We took the holy grail of football experience and made it 3-dimensional 6-storey high. We made Fernando Torres stand 6-story-tall, hung a Nike branded football weighing 600kgs in the air and wove ropes to make Malaysia’s largest goal post. This massive construction took six days to complete. The obsession of football fans was turned into an iconic larger-than-life landmark located at the front of Petaling Jaya’s most popular shopping mall, 1-Utama.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

During the definition football season of Euro Cup 2008, our ambition was to establish Nike as the dominant football brand. There was, however, a barrier to our vision - there was an embargo on all on competitive advertising during all Euro telecasts due to Adidas’ official global Euro Cup sponsorship. The challenge was to get around the regulations without bending the rules and claim football leadership from the official sponsor. We knew that football fans are obsessed. They are fanatics of the addictive moments of scoring goals and idolise their favourite players as gods. The experience of seeing their favourite players scoring goals is the holy grail to any football fan.