±±¾©Èü³µpk10: Sure for Men.
Client: Unilever
Agency: AKQA
Unilever cleverly promoted its Sure Sport for Men brand in Europe with a digital campaign tied in with the World Cup.
Background: Unilever wanted to build the Sure for Men brand across Europe and saw the World Cup as an excellent fit for its Sure Sport for Men product line. Building on its existing overarching campaign 'Extreme protection that lets you go wild', Sure and its digital agency, AKQA, created a push around the idea of 'going wild' at the make or break moments of a football match.
Aims: While it wasn't an official World Cup sponsor, Unilever wanted to tap into the World Cup excitement and harness the sense of camaraderie and national competitiveness associated with the tournament to enhance its 'go wild' theme. The firm also aimed to create a virtual world online where fans from across Europe could gather as a community and celebrate the beautiful game.
Execution: AKQA created a web site (www.surefans.com) containing the European Sure Stadium, hosting all the European countries participating in the 2006 World Cup. The web site allowed fans from all participating countries to create a personalised character, who would 'go wild' when his team scored and receive ratings for how well they were doing. Users were encouraged to select a seat in the stadium to 'attend' matches and reserve seats for their friends. AKQA also built a special UK site, where fans could find out more about the fanzone and enter a competition to win tickets to England games. Sure used the web site in addition to virals and online ads to drum up excitement around Sure Sport For Men. The campaign was executed over two phases. The first aimed to drive traffic to the site and build up attendance to the virtual stadium by encouraging users to reserve seats and sign up a friend. Unilever also ran competitions, and ran standard and rich-media online ads during this time. The second phase, which ran from March until July 2006, saw the full launch of the virtual stadium to all participating markets, which was supported by TV ads that drove users to the site. Visitors could view the TV ad and place an image of themselves or friends into the ad and email it to friends. A country leaderboard was launched before the final 16 of the tournament to show the breakdown of fans in attendance at the online stadium and encourage competition among the fans from different countries. The campaign used virals to encourage users to sign up friends using texts such as 'France is winning, come on, get your mates involved'.
Results: The site was launched in 12 languages and 15 countries, including Greece, despite the national team's failure to qualify for the World Cup.
Traffic to the web site in June alone surpassed the capacity of Berlin's Olympiastadion and, on peak days, the web site received 2.5 visitors a minute. Users stayed on the site for an average of 10 minutes. The virtual stadium was filled to capacity halfway through the campaign and AKQA had to expand it, adding eight new sections to accommodate the number of users wishing to sign up. More than 3,000 fans registered to win tickets to the Fanzone in London alone.
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