Insight
For the 2014 FIFA World Cup Emirates was reluctant to financially match the huge media investment by global brands to leverage its sponsorship; yet the brand was ready to fight for a share of voice and heart using creativity and smart media thinking.
Emirates needed to stand out, be relevant and authentic for its Globalista target audience who like to travel and have a passion for football. It needed a way to increase its voice as a key sponsor, increase engagement and drive traffic to Emirates.com by making an effective brand impact during the busiest and most cluttered period in advertising surrounding the FIFA World Cup 2014.
Havas Media knew Emirates needed a creative platform to meaningfully engage football fans and be ‘buzzworthy’, whilst still showcasing to the Globalistas its superior products and services and highlighting the ever-expanding network which now flies to over 140 destinations, including Brazil.
Emirates’ brand philosophy is to be the bridge between people and places, between cultures and ideas - a philosophy which inspires global conversations. Sports sponsorship has always been a strong vehicle to help carry this philosophy and the agency knew that celebrities have the power to stand out and connect to consumers across borders.
Havas Media’s aim was to create a relevant Football World debate that would effectively meet all the objectives. The idea was to globally connect fans of football by sparking a debate on who is the greatest player of all time.
Strategy
“Who do you think the greatest player of all time is?”
When the sporting event of the year began in Brazil, it wasn’t just the teams in competition. Global sponsors were also after the limelight and Emirates wanted to leverage this exposure. The brand enlisted football legends and brand ambassadors Pele and Ronaldo to launch the campaign, and spark the debate of who’s your greatest player of all time, with a video using the hashtag #AllTimeGreats.
What could be a more compelling way to start the debate on who is the greatest player of all time than to enlist Pele and Ronaldo? Not just any ordinary celebrities - both Portuguese speakers, both flying to Brazil with Emirates, both all-time legends of the game from different generations.
With these icons at the heart of the idea, the agency hoped to spark an engaging debate amongst passionate football fans across generations. With Pele already having won three World Cups, some generations might feel he has already proven himself as an all-time great, but for the younger generations Ronaldo is a star in his own right and was in fact tipped at that time to win the Ballon D’Or award (world’s best footballer). The fact that the recipient of the Ballon D’Or award would receive the award from Pele was an interesting twist that could help stimulate the debate further.
The objective was to make this the largest, multi-screen, online video campaign ever but the biggest challenge was how to engage the Globalista traveller audience. It had to get the video to where they watched and played.
Based on research, the best space for these conversations was online where debates are instant, global and go beyond age and borders. This provided the platform needed to take on the World Cup ad clutter.
Execution
Timing was everything.
Ten weeks before kick-off in Brazil the campaign began to beat the noise of the World Cup. Firstly, Havas Media leveraged Emirates’ owned and partners assets by timing the premier of the #AllTimeGreats video to coincide with a PR event in Madrid announcing Ronaldo as Emirates’ latest Global Ambassador.
By utilising existing Emirates sports sponsorships, the agency worked closely with 13 global properties including Real Madrid, Arsenal, PSG, AC Milan to promote the campaign on their stadium screens, websites and match day programmes.
It leveraged the 11.5 million strong Emirates ‘Skywards’ user-database and communicated across the Emirates website and social platforms as well as its ‘ice’ inflight entertainment system and internal communications to staff. This created a ‘free’ reach to over 35 million people, helping generate the first four million video views.
Then the paid online media went live simultaneously in 28 countries and 12 different languages, with the 60” video at its heart. The campaign was viewed across mobile, MSN and Yahoo homepages, Xbox, Windows 8 desktops, Skype and Applications throughout the day at an effective frequency of 4 views per individual. It accumulated over 100 days of being ‘on air’ across the globe and was the largest single, global video campaign that either MSN or Yahoo! had ever run.
Then things got viral. When the paid media went live, the video asset, supporting articles and extra images were seeded to over 117 global sports and travel bloggers and were subsequently picked up by an additional 1,500 blogs.
Results
Havas Media ran seven research studies across 12 markets to map the campaign success. The results were outstanding.
• 400 million+ video views within 2 weeks
• 145 million+ unique users across the world
• 730 million+ ad impressions delivering 5 million+ visitors to Emirates.com (87% new visitors).
Awareness/Attitude (Millward Brown):
• 94% of consumers associated Emirates with the FIFA World Cup
• 40% higher sponsorship awareness when compared to global benchmarks
• 88% of consumers strongly agreed the campaign made them feel more positive towards Emirates
• Consideration: 84%+ amongst Emirates target audience
• Emirates.com visits: 296%
• 57% of consumers believed #AllTimeGreats cemented Emirates as a unique brand
Viralty/Interaction:
• Ranked in Top 5 best global ‘content driving’ campaigns associated with football leading up to the World Cup (Unruly Media), beating FIFA, Visa, Adidas and ESPN
• 1,528 online publications picked up the campaign giving Emirates 85% SOV – compared to major rival Turkish Airlines
• 95 million+ followers were reached on Twitter alone
• 900,000 Facebook interactions, eclipsing Emirates’ closest active competitors (Air Malta, Qatar and Cathay) by hundreds of times
• Viral spread of the campaign resulted in an additional 8 million+ organic YouTube views
• 262% increase of social buzz compared to previous month
• 3.4 million+ impressions driven via Emirates global sponsorship properties.