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.

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

After a few days, in a Facebook Live, we revealed NBA invitation for Oscar’s debut. To promote the game, we launched a digital and social campaign, with digital media, web video and social media campaign.

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). Adidas also launched exclusive snickers for Oscar to wear at the game.

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

After the game, we launched a 17-minute documentary following the whole Oscar’s preparation. It is still available at the digital platform ESPN Watch.

• 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.

Budweiser’s target are people in the social class AB older than 18. Lots of them had never seen Oscar play, but many had heard the stories about him (Oscar retired 14 years ago and his career had its peak between the 80s and 90s).

Before communicating NBA’s invitation, we released at Oscar’s Fan Page a teaser announcing Oscar was training for a mysterious reason. The video generated curiosity and became news with more than 600K interactions.

Days later, we revealed the invitation and launched a complete digital campaign, telling the story of Oscar and promoting his debut at NBA.

Telling the story of this sports legend was communicating Budweiser’s values and concepts to our target. But the strategy was to go beyond and do something epic. NBA’s unprecedented invitation create a fact that soon became news. Something to rewrite the story of Brazilian basketball and be remembered forever.

Budweiser is an NBA sponsor in Brazil. But the Brazilian basketball lives its worst moment in history. In 2016, the Brazilian Basketball Confederation was suspended from all international competitions by FIBA, for bad administration. It was time to rescue the Brazilian pride for its basketball. And we did it paying tribute to a great idol.

Oscar Schmidt is the greatest scorer in history and holds many records in basketball. He’s had a successful career both in Europe and in the Brazilian national team, but although being a legend, he never could play in the NBA. He was drafted in 1984, the same year of Michael Jordan. But according to a rule back then, if he accepted the league’s invitation, he would never be allowed to play for Brazil again.

Choosing the hard way is what builds legends such as Bud and Oscar. That’s why Bud had to pay this tribute.