NIKE wanted to own the German team during the UEFA Euro 2012. But the team and the whole tournament were sponsored by Adidas. So they needed an idea to ambush this predominance.

Our only asset was a group of NIKE players within the team. They were still young but already the hope of the team. And not much older than our young and tech-savvy target group.

We knew that with this audience a traditional ad campaign would not cut it. They needed something to believe in. Something that would feed the hunger to see their team winning an international title.

So we started HUNGRY GERMAN YOUTH. Not a campaign but a movement. That didn’t have a big TV ad at its core but a t-shirt.

Before the tournament we gave it exclusively to the NIKE athletes in the team, so they could wear it throughout the tournament. We used their Facebook pages to share images of them in the t-shirt with millions of fans. When users on facebook began to ask for it, we started a series of events where limited editions and our lookbooks were given away.

With the start of the group stage we took over the German streets. With thousands of Hungry German Youth wildposts. Posted every morning after a game of the team, to celebrate their victory. And of course there also was a website. With a digital lookbook featuring images and films with our­­ NIKE athletes and a twitter and Facebook integration.

“Where can I get this t-shirt?” was probably the most asked question between football fans in Germany during the Euro 2012. Only on Facebook images and films of our NIKE athletes wearing the t-shirt were shared on over 40m timelines. And that’s not counting the images of normal people wearing it.

The t-shirt, posters and films were in newspapers and magazines. They were worn in music videos, interviews and TV shows. All together giving us more than €100m in Earned Media. After the defeat against Italy the BILD Zeitung, Germany's biggest tabloid, even put the headline from our Match Day Poster on their cover.

And when the Hungry German Youth t-shirt went on sale before the quarter finals, it was sold out nationwide within a week.