A special edition of L’Equipe with the stories a sports fan has always dreamt to read. More sporting dreams than fans would experience in a lifetime. A newspaper packed with joy, with “WOWs”, with excitement. Ronaldinho back in the Seleçao scores 2 goals in the final to win the world cup. Kobe Bryant equals Jordan with a 6th NBA title. Drogba returns to Marseille. And a lot more.

We wanted to create a “real” newspaper, as credible as possible, to maximize reading pleasure. So we involved the editorial board to have them write the articles. The best sports journalists in France played the game, and wrote fiction instead of reports and analysis.

The front page, showing Renaud Lavillenie who had broken Serguei Bubka’s mythical record at pole vault, immediately caught attention in store & spread on twitter (“How could I miss that?!”).

All the articles were then used on the website where “L’Equipe of our dreams” was downloadable for free.

Eventually, we gave sports fans the best ever reason to buy and read L’Equipe on that day.

Sales increased by 20% on the 24th december, usually the worst day of the year for L’Equipe. The operation drove 600,000 more people on lequipe.fr.

#lequipedereve trending topic on 24th december. Sports fan massively commented and shared spontaneously their sport dreams on Twitter and FB.

The main french radios and TV mentioned it – and it became the news : competitor’s journalists debated on the chances our stories had to become reality. Eventually, Renaud Lavilenie did break the paul vault world record 2 months later, as anticipated. And exacerbated the media noise.

More than ever, we made L’Equipe the brand people turn to share their love of sport.