Situation:

Brazil has 250,000 missing children, and 50,000 disappear every year. This terrible situation scares our people and brings justifiable despair to the families involved.

Brief:

Mães da Sé, an NGO that helps find missing children, needed to talk about the problem to a broader audience, and Children’s Day was the perfect date to draw attention to the matter. All the organisation needed was to broaden its reach. So the NGO approached Palmeiras, one of the biggest Brazilian football clubs, to help make this happen.

Objectives:

Draw attention to the problem and help find missing children if possible.

In a nutshell: Palmeiras, the football club that partnered with Mães da Sé, removed its Twitter account the day after an important match and right before Children’s Day, so their fans would go crazy about the disappearing and the rivals and the media would mock and wonder what had happened. Then, it would reappear, delivering the NGO’s message.

Using a football team’s Twitter account to deliver the message, the NGO could speak to millions and get an otherwise impossible value in earned media.

Data gathering:

Social listening, PR outreach, media ROI.

Target audience:

Brazilian football fans digitally engaged (~90 MM fans), 44% women & 56% men.

Relevance to social platform:

Twitter is the preferred social media platform for football fans in Brazil. To “hijack” Palmeiras’ account for hours generated enough buzz to prompt strong PR and Dark Social waves that took the mystery forward, creating the perfect landscape for the missing children awareness message afterwards.

Approach:

The mechanics were as simple as that: a) deactivate the Palmeiras’ Twitter account, b) stall the press and fanbase with a speech of “possible hacking” and “working to solve the problem”, c) wait for the perfect window (9 am next day) to reveal the true message and influence the agenda of main sports media outlets on TV and online (peak between 10 am and 1 pm).

Implementation:

On October 11, 2022, at 8 pm, Palmeiras removed its Twitter account without further explanation.

Timeline:

From October 11, 2022, at 8 pm to October 12, 2022, at 9 am.

Placement:

Online - Twitter.

Scale:

Nationwide

4,000,000+ people reached

200,000+ interactions

100+ articles

350% access increase to the NGO website

45% increase in Google search