Our solution was to turn the usual sports marketing paradigm on its head. Rather than focus on garnering support for Australia we focused on making Ghana the focal point.

Our idea was to create a fake Ghanaian fan club, intent on spelling the word ‘GHANA’ on their chests. But due to the lack of Ghanaians in Australia they couldn’t find a fifth member, and were hence missing the “H”. So we sent them onto the streets of Sydney, where they appealed to the public to attend the game and be their missing “H”.While our idea began as a piece of ambient media, the interest it generated meant that it channelled into other forms of media, such as online blogs and live television e.g. interviews on national news programmes.

In just 24 hours the Ghanaians’ appeal snowballed into a national TV news story, with interviews on various morning shows and primetime news segments around the country. They were also the topic of discussion on numerous blog sites around the globe. In under 48 hours the Ghanaians had been exposed to hundreds of thousands of people, giving the FFA $250,000 worth of media value for a budget of only $15,000. And all of this translated into a 50% increase in ticket sales in only three days.