The Brief

It’s been 28 Years, but finally in 2010 New Zealand did it. We made the FIFA World Cup finals. As official sponsors of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, VISA wanted to make the most of this opportunity, galvanize the nation behind the team and tie all this in with the international Worldwide Cheer campaign. Our objective was to lift the nation and get as many visa cardholders as possible to scream ‘goooal!’.

Creative Execution

Visa’s rally cry is, “More people go with Visa”. The idea was intimately linked to this philosophy. We gave people a place where they could go and show their support, a place where they could take action and be rewarded. It demonstrated that Visa was the global credit card brand behind the World’s biggest sporting event, and that by participating in the Visa Stadium you, and all kiwi’s, were part of something huge. The stadium was the hub for all other communications including TVCs, POS, Press, radio, targeted email and online advertising.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

We’re a small nation and we were a long way from the action. We needed to get our voice heard around the world! To do this we built the Visa Stadium, a 3D animation based on Soccer City in Johannesburg. We then set the challenge for Kiwi’s to come take a seat and scream at the top of their lungs ‘goooal!’ Anyone with a seat would be in to win either tickets to the final in South Africa or a home entertainment centre. Fans could use webcams or upload videos to the site. We even set up scream booths in local malls. For more shy types, registering any purchase on a visa card was another way to take a seat.

Results

The stadium was a fantastic success. We had over 43,336 entries into the competition and over 1,083 videos uploaded. We achieved this from a tiny population of just 4 million people. In contrast an international Worldwide Cheer campaign running at the same time registered only 2000. We successfully helped galvanise Kiwi’s behind the team and the tournament, and Visa was ecstatic. Best of all we weren’t the only Kiwi’s that over-achieved. New Zealand, the tournaments easy beats, scored two goals and ended up being the only team undefeated in the 2010 FIFA World Cup. They are now national heroes.