To officially sponsor the World Cup would cost anywhere between $10m to $25m (Source: Nasdaq). Heinz didn’t have the budget to get involved, officially, but with consumer spend on food projected to increase by 80% during the event it couldn’t afford to not be (Source: Zawya). We needed a flash of brilliance to blindside FIFA in a way that was legal yet disruptive enough to capture the attention of football fans both at the World Cup premises and online.

Heinz Arabia wasn’t an official sponsor of the FIFA World Cup, so we used the most unconventional and unexpected OOH medium to advertise the brand during the event – breaking the rules without breaking the rules through a person who bears the same name as the brand (Thomas Heinz). We flew him to Doha and had him roaming around the city in a Heinz-branded football jersey and built an engaging campaign around him for fans both online and on-ground to find him and win prizes. This allowed us to be present at the event in a non-standard way, turning the whole city into a treasure hunt in search of Thomas Heinz.