Oscar Schmidt chose the hard way and became a legend. That’s why Budweiser had to rewrite this story.

In an unprecedented partnership with ESPN and NBA, we got Oscar Schmidt to play his first NBA game, at age 59. The All-Star Weekend is an official event that brings together great stars and is broadcasted for over 160 countries.

Oscar was the first player who never played in the league to be invited for the event. To that end, he went back to training 14 years after having retired. He overcame the pain and was honored many times. And on February 17th he finally made his NBA debut.

If there was something left in Oscar’s career, now there isn’t any more.

The first step was to present the project to NBA. The league was also interested in increasing its commercial presence in Brazil and fell in love with the idea.

In January 19th, we posted a video teaser in Oscar’s Page, with Oscar training for some mysterious reason. The video had more than 600k interactions.

After a few days, in a Facebook Live, we revealed NBA invitation for Oscar’s debut.

The invitation motivated several other tributes, making the idea even bigger. NBA launched in Brazil the Oscar’s Brooklyn Nets jersey (former New Jersey Nets, that had drafted Oscar in 1984). In only 4 hours it was sold out. Adidas also launched exclusive snickers for Oscar to wear at the game. And a 17-minute documentary was produced, following the whole Oscar’s preparation.

Oscar entered the court on February 17th having scored all of his throws, and finally made his debut at NBA.

• Oscar’s game had the biggest audience of this kind of event in Brazil’s history.

• The campaign had more than 217 MM impressions.

• More than 64 million people were impacted by earned media.

• Budweiser search increased 226% during the campaign.

• 96% of the campaign mentions were positive.

• #OscarnaNBA were world top trending topic on Twitter.

• The Oscar’s game had the biggest audience of event in Brazil’s history.

• Oscar was invited to several TV shows and received many other tributes.

• During the campaign, Adidas launched special basketball sneakers for the game, using the campaign’s hashtag.

• Despite Oscar having never played in the league, NBA put his possible Jersey up for sale in Brazil, and it was sold out in only 4 hours.

• The action has also generated a 17-minute documentary film, produced by ESPN.