FC Zurich Women was the first women's football club in Switzerland, founded 50 years ago. To celebrate this anniversary, we were asked to draw attention to the club's achievements and to it’s history. So what’s there to talk about? The female club had great achievements – best team in the country and playing Champions League. But up until today, womens football in Switzerland has been widely neglected by the media. And it is practically impossible for great athletes to become famous and make a living.

Women's football has not been able to gain the attention of media and public it deserves in the last 50 years. Great athletes have been playing internationally and with big success, but without notice. Up to this day, no female soccer player in Switzerland can make a living from it. We wanted to help create a brighter future for female players - where success and making a living of professional football becomes an option. And to motivate young female athletes to pursue their dreams. If what it takes is to twist the past a little bit, then fine.

We wanted to get the women what they deserved. What if female football had the same media attention and fame as their male counterparts in the last 50 years, what if there were sponsors and fame? We found two women players of the founding days of FC Zurich Women – Trudy and Heidi, now in their 60s – and put them in the spotlight. In our mockumentary film we mixed up real career facts with fiction of them having become international stars. We wanted to change the past to create a more equal future.

We wanted to motivate young female athletes to pursue their dreams. To do that, we also have to change the minds of the public, people interested in watching sports, because they change the way the topics broadcasted by the media and the stories viewed as acceptable. To reach our target group, we targeted people interested in sports with an entertaining film – and showed it to them at a place where they are: Online, but also in the stadium. We wanted to twist the past to create a brighter future for female players - where success and making a living of playing professional football becomes an option.

The film showed the huge hidden potential of the two ladies – as being fit for being stars and in the spotlight, and as great athletes – being almost 70year old, still able to run fast and score a goal on the pitch. With an entertaining film, we let celebrities from male football tell the make-believe story of Trudy and Heidi. Such as Beni Turnheer, legendary TV-Spokesman, or Georges Bregy, World Cup scorer and national Swiss football hero. They praised the skills and legacy of Trudy and Heidi. So we managed to create a perfect illusion – but cleverly integrated real career facts of the female players. So it is up to the viewer to decode what is true. The film Film was shown to stadium crowds of male and female FCZ Football games It was accompanied by online film and (free) PR in Switzerland’s biggest news media.

The film was very well received from fans at the stadium release at FC Zurich male and female games in the stadium Letzigrund. We also received loads of free media coverage by the biggest national and regional media. Finally, our two senior players really had become somewhat national stars, even giving interviews at the biggest national Radio Channel SRF, being featured on Blick.ch, the biggest national daily online newspaper as well as on TV. All in all, at stadium and online free pr, we received around half a million people – with no media budget (which is huge for a Small Country such as Switzerland). So our twisted past somehow became true, finally. So that hopefully in the future, we can hear a story as we told it for real.