Modern sports sponsorship reaches its full potential when forging strong partnerships. Partnerships that are based on common ground, trigger change, and strengthen society. Leveraging Siemens’ partnership with FC Bayern, we focused the 2021/22 activation on social sustainability. All episodes of the online series #Overcome tackle topics such as inclusion, diversity, and equality – and reflect experiences many people have faced or will face at some point in their lives. On the campaign website, we fully immerse our audience in inspiring stories through an innovative light check, offering a unique brand experience through “technology with purpose”.

Sport is much more than medals and records. Sport is about emotion, passion and personal stories that give us unforgettable moments. A strategic partnership can support this – to spread the word and empower people.

Siemens’ partnership with FC Bayern has been in place since 2017. Until the current season, the company relied primarily on data-driven storytelling in the sponsorship's activations.

For the 2021/22 season, we eyed an emotional campaign focusing on socially-relevant topics and purpose-driven storytelling. In challenging times, Siemens wanted to leverage the partnership to convey bold messages of encouragement to our target audiences and raise awareness for social issues.

Our overall goal was to share inspiring stories with our audience. The more people we would reach, the greater our chance of achieving this. We therefore opted for an awareness campaign, with reach as the KPI, to measure our success.

#Overcome by Siemens is a stage for seven FC Bayern protagonists, shedding light on the biggest challenges of their lives. Their stories address socially relevant topics like diversity and integration, subsequently inspiring our audience never to give up, no matter what challenges they have to #Overcome themselves.

With the spotlight on very intimate moments, #Overcome certainly deserves all the attention in the world. But with screen time skyrocketing, capturing our audience’s attention with our campaign presented a real challenge. Our idea: on our website, we ask users to dim their lights before watching the episodes. The effect: viewers fully immerse themselves in the stories.

Siemens has committed itself to the sustainable development of society. With #Overcome, the company aims to "create what people care about" by tackling social issues. Accordingly, we chose all protagonists to advocate for social impact and support Siemens' sustainability framework DEGREE.

To put the whole focus on their stories, Siemens and FC Bayern stepped behind the curtains, allowing the seven personalities to take center stage. With their #Overcome moments centered around socially relevant topics like diversity, equality, and inclusion, we weren't just eying sports fans or B2B audiences, but above all society in general.

According to GWI, FC Bayern's global fanbase shows strong interest in socio-political (49%, index 148) and health-related topics (56%, index 126). Yet, more than half of them (59%) feel uncomfortable speaking about mental health.

With #Overcome, we wanted to address them directly and use them as multipliers to reach people beyond sports as a whole.

#Overcome started on November 15th 2021, with the release of Episode 1 starring Paul Zipser. Thereafter, we updated the campaign hub monthly with new episodes.

Each clip was initially distributed exclusively on our campaign hub, where we asked users to dim the surrounding lights before watching. Leveraging the device’s brightness sensors and camera data allowed us to fully immerse viewers in the stories on our website. This way, we cut out all distractions and enabled our audience to focus on inspiring #Overcome moments.

We led our target audiences to the campaign hub through organic and paid social media assets on all partner’s relevant channels (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube), as well as via a PR strategy and digital boards in the stadiums.

So far, #Overcome has reached over 75M people, with more than 220,000 total engagements worldwide.

The media also picked up on the campaign with a total of 28 articles, because, unlike what you would usually expect from media-savvy stars, all our protagonists dived deep into very personal experiences. Their strong belief in the idea and efforts behind #Overcome contributed significantly to the campaign's success. Former NBA player Paul Zipser and France international soccer player Dayot Upamecano shared stories they've never talked about before.

Yet, the campaign delivered more than just numbers. It gained momentum of its own, inspiring users and players to share their personal stories in the comments and on their private social media channels. This, for us, is the real success of #Overcome.