The FIFA World Cup is the biggest moment in sports culture. Tons of commercial messages compete with the low nonsense tolerance of an audience that skips ads faster than Messi can nutmeg a defender. While convention suggested shortening films to six seconds to avoid the feared skip, we looked into YouTube data and realized: it’s not a lack of attention, it’s a lack of relevance. Based on this data of drop-off points, instead of shortening our film, we made an effort to create real personal relevance within the first crucial 15 seconds to get our audience into the story – and keep them there until the end.

To land our message around Creativity with everyone while ensuring relevance to every single viewer, we needed to tell our story with a personal twist within the first 15 seconds. Together with Google, we evolved YouTube’s capabilities with their nascent Director Mix platform to create personalized anthem films based on each viewer’s data signals. The film they saw was based on their location, favourite sports, and cultural interests. A football fan from Manchester would see Pogba, the Manchester United forward, welcoming him to a show hosted by Stormzy, a UK Grime artist. A basketball fan from Tokyo would see Damian Lillard, an NBA basketball player, welcoming her to a show hosted by Somesuch. A runner from New York City would be greeted by Karlie Kloss to a show by ASAP Ferg. And so on. And so on.