Insight
Every December, The Bundesliga goes on a break, leaving FOX Sports with a challenge: how to keep people talking about the league during a month-long gap in action? FOX Sports also wanted to connect the brand and the network, and showcase its position as the league’s global broadcast partner.
It needed a low-cost, high-impact social media campaign that could be used by all FOX Sports regions around the world.
Everything it developed would go out throughout partners, including the Bundesliga, all 18 clubs and their players, and the individual FOX Sports regions. There was no media spend behind this, so it needed to create something both relevant to their audiences, and highly shareable.
Fox also knew that it needed something that appealed to both old and new fans. It needed to re-engage existing fans after the break, and turn them into vocal advocates. It also wanted to reel in new fans for the second half of the season.
To that end, the brand set an ambitious social reach target of 300 million, ensuring that it would get the social coverage it needed.
The campaign needed to have an incredibly simple user experience, so it could be easily localised and shared. It wanted a ‘quick win’, so people could participate, feel rewarded, and build a relationship with both FOX Sports and their favourite Bundesliga team.
Research showed that one of The Bundesliga’s defining characteristics was that it has the most goals of any European professional football league. This made for an appealing USP: goals are the most exciting part of the sport, and can be appreciated by seasoned fans and newcomers alike.
Strategy
Fox Sports created #18toWin - the world’s biggest penalty shoot-out.
This was the first-ever promotion of its type, with all 18 clubs, FOX Sports and The Bundesliga working together to create this unique social challenge.
Each Bundesliga club filmed a secret penalty over the winter break: 18 of them, featuring star players from every club. After several weeks of teasers - including behind-the-scenes content from the training grounds – Fox Sports unveiled the challenge.
#18toWin challenged fans to predict the results of all 18 penalties on Twitter and Facebook – by using emoji. They needed to post or tweet a combination of 18 football and hand emoji, using the #18toWin hashtag to register their guess. They could also compose and share their predictions using a microsite or a Facebook app.
It kept fans guessing – and playing – for over two weeks. For those taking the challenge scientifically, there were infographics packed with stats. For those looking to find a new favourite team, there were gifs and video interviews. It kept everyone educated and entertained with video, gif and image content, shared from both clubs and FOX Sports.
#18toWin was quick to play, it was easy to share, and it was absolutely everywhere, with every team and FOX Sports region sharing the challenge content around the world.
Execution
#18toWin launched on January 22, coinciding with the first Bundesliga match after the winter break. FOX Sports regions re-branded its social channels around the world to celebrate, and an #18toWin app was added to all the Bundesliga clubs and FOX Sports Facebook pages.
Over the two-week campaign period, it supported the activity with new assets released every single day. These included:
- Behind the scenes footage
- Interviews
- Candid stills
- Infographics
- Animated gifs
- Teaser films (one for each club)
- Teaser videos
- On-air promos
- Instructional content, showing how to play the game
- Banners and mpus for website use
- Video ‘reward’ content, shared with microsite and app participants.
On February 5, it revealed the results. Each club released a 30” bespoke video at the same time around the world. An hour later, FOX Sports shared the complete results in a single compilation video.
Fox Networks created and shared over 150 pieces of original content, including over 40 videos. Each individual asset was also translated into seven languages for global use.
It also provided toolkits, complete with sample tweets, posts and replies – supporting the clubs and FOX Sports regions as they engaged with the fans and participants. By using social listening, it was able to identify #18toWin predictions within each region, and send them reward content or ‘thank you’ tweets from their local FOX Sports channel.
Results
#18toWin smashed the target, achieving an organic social reach of over 650 million, with participants from over 100 countries. This was accomplished without any boosted posts or advertising spend.
It also achieved the goal of reaching new fans: over half the people that used the hashtag did not follow a Bundesliga club at the start of the campaign.
On Facebook, there were over 100,000 engagements on the public posts, and an additional 2.8 million video views. The Facebook app was embedded in all 18 club pages and a dozen FOX Sports regions. Over 50,000 people played through the app alone.
On Twitter, #18toWin generated over 4,700 hashtagged tweets (excluding retweets and favourites), with an organic reach of over 200 million. Over half the tweets shared some of the original campaign content as well. As well as teams and FOX Sports, the campaign was shared (and played) by regional sportscasters, fan clubs and players.
Excited fans and partners also carried #18toWin content over to YouTube, Vimeo, Google+, Instagram, Tumblr and even LinkedIn. The prediction challenge was also a hit in other earned media, with over 80 pieces of coverage from magazines, trade media, regional press and football blogs.