Cannes Lions
AFRICA, Sao Paulo / ESPN / 2017
Overview
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Credits
Description
The break in football airing happens at the same time when NBA’s season starts, which is also aired by ESPN. In order not to lose the football audience, we created a campaign to promote a change in habit very hard for Brazilians: swapping football for basketball. Since this is something unthinkable for football fans, we used a common expression as our campaign message “Swap feet for hands”. The expression in Brazilian Portuguese means confusion, madness, inversion. Besides that, it clearly explains the swapping of football (feet) for basketball (hands).
We created a series of posters mixing basketball elements with football showing people that they didn’t need to change sports channel. To reinforce the confusion atmosphere, the campaign’s visual shows a deconstructed aesthetic approach, using a mixture of different visual languages. To promote the campaign, we chose strategy touch points such as public sports courts to place the posters.
Execution
More than creating posters that contained elements of football and basketball, we tried to mix both these universes in pieces with great visual graphic appeal. Using different techniques and languages (such as silkscreen, collage, painting, etc.) to stand out from the rest of the communication in other sports channels and even from the rest of ESPN’s usual visual language in conventional campaigns.
We used silkscreen, collage, painting, etc. to reinforce the project’s concept. It was a guerrilla idea and we carefully selected the places to show our posters. Always keeping in mind that we had to reach football fans. Our main gallery was one of the busiest avenues in Sao Paulo.
Outcome
The campaign reinforced the channel’s objective of offering varied shows to its sports fans, helping to introduce a new habit in people’s lives when it comes to watching another sport, not only football. Besides strengthening ESPN brand, the campaign also contributed to the growth of audience rate. For consumers, the campaign conveyed ESPN’s broad broadcasting grid and reinforced its position as airing the most important basketball league in the world.
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