Racism is a real problem in Italian football.

Inter’s motto is Brothers Of The World.

On December 26th, 2018, Napoli’s player Kalidou Koulibaly was booed with racist howls (in Italian: “buu razzisti”) by Inter’s most radical supporters. Inter was punished with 2 days of closed-door matches.

With the BUU campaign (acronym of Brothers Universally United), the club took a clear stand against discrimination and against its own racist fans.

We positioned Inter as a modern team that talks relevantly to a domestic and International audience and that is able push the cultural boundaries of football one step further.

With BUU, Inter turned racist booing (Italian “buu razzisti) into a message of unity by transforming “buu” into BUU: Brothers Universally United.

And asked the fans of Inter, of football and of respect to write it in order to never hear it again.

Racism is one of the issues in football that are rarely directly addressed. To prove that Inter can be the global voice of the “Brothers of the World”, the club’s motto, taking a bold stand against a part of its own (racist) fans was the key to draw massive endorsement from influencers, celebrities and media worldwide.

Assets supporting the campaign were:

- A launch video explaining the acronym BUU and engaging people to support the campaign

- A digital kit of BUU signs to be printed out for anyone to campaign with Inter

- A giant banner installed on the bleachers of an empty Meazza stadium

- An OOH and print campaign in Milan, Italy.

On the day before the second closed-doors match, 18 January 2019, we published an online video launching the initiative featuring Inter’s president Steven Zhang, captain Mauro Icardi and Inter legends Javier Zanetti, Luis Figo and Samuel Eto’o.

This helped spread awareness of the initiative and stimulated online response.

On Inter’s website, BUU signs could be downloaded and printed to support the campaign.

On the day of the match, 19 January, a giant banner (105 m long) composed of dozens of different BUU signs was installed. The empty stadium became a medium: BUU banners were seen on TV during the match and further amplified the message.

This allowed us to infiltrate the debate about racism in sports media.

The campaign received massive support from players, opponent teams, celebrities, brands and the media, such as the New York Times, ESPN and China Daily. In Italy, BUU was covered by all the sports and non-sports media and made headline news in all channels (TV, radio, print and digital).

The launch video was seen over 6 million times despite having no sponsoring budget and produced 315,000 interactions (sports, non sports-related celebrities and influencers worldwide).

130,000 websites covered the campaign.

But the best part is that when racist booing started up again during a subsequent match, the whole stadium whistled and silenced it.