Entertainment Lions For Sport > Challenges & Breakthroughs

THE ANTIZICA HAIRCUT

TECH AND SOUL, Sao Paulo / UNILEVER / 2023

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Overview

Credits

OVERVIEW

Why is this work relevant for Sport Entertainment?

While originally aiming to hack the 2022 FIFA World Cup, Clear managed to go beyond, and ended up hacking Brazilian culture as a whole.

We got a country that only cares about football to talk about a haircut during a World Cup.

Background

Situation

Even though Clear really wished to take part in the conversation around the world’s biggest soccer event, with one of the world’s most passionate fans, there was a major problem – the brand wasn’t an official sponsor neither of the 2022 FIFA World Cup nor the Brazilian National Soccer team (not even the Portuguese team, where Cristiano Ronaldo would play).

Brief:

How to hack the world cup without to be sued?

Objectives:

How to interact with world cup audience, withou Being a official sponsor, not being able to openly mention or make references to the event, its mascots, participating teams, their athletes and not even their uniforms? And, “Ambush marketing” tactics were strictly forbidden by FIFA and threatened with legal sanctions

Describe the strategy & insight

Since Clear wasn’t an official sponsor, we based our work on a few premises:

1 - Brands can’t openly talk or relate themselves to the event, but people can. Clear’s exposure had to be propelled by people, so we needed to give them the right tools and motivations to do so, and the prospect of addressing culturally relevant superstitions seemed promising for that end.

2 - If we wanted to be part of the conversation, we needed to be present where and when conversation trends spark and spread like wildfire on their own, so exploring platforms like Instagram, Tiktok and Twitter would be key.

3 – Communication restrictions get tighter the moment the event starts, so our main communication efforts had to happen in its preceding weeks, aiming for an impact strong enough to cause a ripple

Describe the creative idea

In 2002 Brazil was world champion with the striker R9, Ronaldo, "thanks to a lucky haircut", which scared the zica of the Brazilian team.

Exactly 20 years later, 2022, we invite another R9, Richarlisson, to give Zica a lucky haircut. We created the Antizica Clear cut.

And Brazil talked about the World Cup, but also talked about this haircut.

20 years ago, Brazil’s last victory in a World Cup was marked by an unusual, yet iconic symbol known for being able to “break the zica” at that time – Ronaldo’s (the “R9”) unusual haircut, nicknamed by fans as the “lucky haircut”, which is still remembered and mentioned to this day.

For the 2022 FIFA World Cup we decided to create a new lucky haircut with a “twist”, empowered by an ingredient locally renowned for its “anti-zica” properties, the “Arruda”.

“Clear Antizica” idea – a preparation ritual that started with the use of

Describe the craft & execution

To kick-off this story, we needed a powerful and relevant name as the face of our campaign, and that’s when Richarlison came in - an ascending Brazilian player, who was playing in the UK for the Tottenham Hotspur F.C., famous not only for his performance and charisma in the field, which granted him the nickname “The Pidgeon” (because of his iconic “pidgeon celebration dance”), but also for his support to social causes in Brazil. Besides that, he was considered one of the top candidates for the Brazilian National Team draft, specifically for the symbolic number 9 uniform, turning him into a possible “new R9”.

We hired Richarlison and, 2 days before the official draft was announced. And we launched the lucky haircut, the Antizica Haircut.

- We lauched this on instagram and Tik Tok.

- This turn on viral in news, world cup transmition, sites, other social networks, etc.

Describe the results

Overall, in only 3 weeks the campaign managed to achieve:

- More than 103 million impressions (Tiktok, Instagram and Twitter),

- Almost 200 mentions in news portals (locally and internationally)

- The hashtag #ClearAntizica had more than 123 million views on Tiktok.

-In terms of social interactions, we were able to achieve more than 2,8 million,

- Thousands of #ClearAntizica haircuts shared,

- Almost 2000 videos produced by fans on Tiktok,

- becoming the 2nd biggest campaign in UL brazil, and the 1st of B&W (number of videos shared by users in the #).

Please provide budget details.

US$ 180.000,

Is there any cultural context that would help the jury understand how this work was perceived by people in the country where it ran?

The bad luck of Brazilian football has lasted for 20 years.

And in 2002, the last time Brazil won the world cup, Ronaldo, R9, got the lucky haircut that went viral in Brazil and around the world.

20 years later, at the 2022 World Cup, Richarlisson, the new R9 of the Brazilian team, also uses an anti-Zica haircut that became a topic in Brazil, created fashion and entered the culture.

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