SAP’s ambition is to be a Top 10 ‘Most Valuable Global Brand’. Becoming Technology Partner to Manchester City was one step towards this – empowering the team with data insights and delivering stats City’s fans crave, a key audience for SAP in reaching their goal.

But fans still didn’t know what SAP does for Man City. We needed to engage with them.

So the challenge was to create an entertaining and engaging stats-based campaign that showed the partnership between SAP and Manchester City. Changing fans’ perception by highlighting how SAP fuels their passion and empowers them to become more knowledgeable about their favourite team.

Objectives:

• Drive fan-first brand awareness of SAP by reaching 10M+ fans globally

• Reach at least 0.5M+ fans in China – a key market for SAP

• Drive at least 85%+ positive sentiment among fans

• Leverage players’ international popularity to humanise the SAP brand

Our football-obsessed audience know everything there is to know about their beloved club and its star players. So the idea was to put this knowledge, and their love of stats, to the ultimate test – and encourage fans’ natural competitive streak on social media.

We took 4 global football superstars from Manchester City’s star-studded squad… and hid them in full-body morphsuits. So the only clue to their identities was their stats. Fans were then challenged to guess ‘Who’s the Blue?’ and identify each player for the chance to win big.

The ‘Who’s the Blue?’ social media campaign provided daily entertainment and conversation, keeping fans coming back day after day to view the latest challenge and see if their guess was correct. This drove continued fan interaction and banter, all the while increasing their understanding of SAP’s partnership with Manchester City.

Football fans are crazy for stats. And stats are SAP’s bag, providing insights that help millions worldwide get closer to the game.

By targeting the passion points of Manchester City fans with a series of social videos, we could cost-effectively reach and engage a wider audience with a small production budget. But we first had to understand the fans’ needs and wants, to help them better understand the SAP brand, leading us to focus on 3 key areas:

Reach

• Targeting a global fan audience through City’s social platforms, using authentic, football-focused content to increase shareability.

Engagement

• Creating content that reflects fans’ desire for stats and puts that knowledge to the test, ensuring genuine interaction with the campaign and building a stronger connection between fan and club.

Sentiment

• Using players to humanise the SAP brand, and connect with fans – through humour-led content that truly captivates the audience.

SAP produced its most successful and farthest-reaching sports campaign ever, surpassing all targets. It kept fans glued to their screens, with views and engagement figures increasing every single day. All with a £10k media spend, showing the campaign’s huge organic growth.

• 57.5M Impressions

• 45.3M Reach

• 11.6M Video Views

• 2M Engagements

• 91% Positive Sentiment

• 1M PR Exposure

• $704,865.00 Return On Ad Spend

The campaign drove fan-first brand awareness globally for SAP, resonating particularly well with the Asian market – with nearly 1million views on Manchester City’s Chinese social media channels alone.

The competition drove a high positive sentiment amongst the fans, leveraging the players to build a strong connection and encourage participation.

It was also one of the most successful Manchester City social campaigns. Ever. Generating awareness of SAP in millions of supporters and helping to push SAP into the brand big league.