This summer, the French women's football team played in its 5th World Cup, in a unique context. Up until a few weeks before the competition, no media organization had stepped in to buy the broadcasting rights for the event.

In a country where football is a passion, women's football is left out of the fervor. One of the reasons is prejudice about its lack of technical skills. Many fans have a strong opinion about it, without ever having watched a match, or having looked at biased compilations ("The worst of women's football", "100% fails women's football”…)

This is why the WWC was a key moment for Orange, a committed partner of football for 24 years, to go beyond its usual support for the French Women's Team, via a CSR brief whose main objective was to tackle the prejudices that women's football suffers from.

In France, football is king, with a popularity that has been fueled by the succeses of the men’s national team : 2-times world champion, finalist of the last edition in 2022. But women's football is left our of the fervor, partly because it’s still a relatively young sport, only being officially recognized by the FFF in 1974. This 2023 Women’s Wold Cup was only the 9th edition, whereas it was the 22nd for the men’s. But this doesn’t mean the women’s team’s drive is less than the men’s : they have been #5 in the FIFA ranking for years, have reached the semi-final during the last Euro…

Before the WWC, the French should have been cheering for their determined team. Yet, 3 weeks before its start, no TV partner had agreed to cover it. This was a painful reminder of the lack of institutional support to the sport in France, while other countries have succeeded in bridging the gender inequalities in football, by investing. In this panorama, it was important for brand sponsors such as Orange to step in.

For Orange, the leading telecommunication company, as a former state-owned company, public service is a core value. It is one of the first French brands to provide extensive support for football, with a trackrecord of 24 years backing amateur, professional,women and men’s football. Since 2018, the brand has held the status of a Major Partner of the French Football Federation, supporting both the Men's and Women's National Teams with equal resources.

To challenge football fans' preconceived notions, we used their love of beautiful technical moves to create a Trojan horse. We created a never-before-seen compilation of actions from players of the French men's team. For 1 minute, we see the beautiful play of Mbappé, Giroud, Griezmann, etc..., in a sequence that borrows from the codes of sports best-of videos.

The reveal then unveils the ruse: the video was in reality a compilation of... women’s technical moves! Thanks to VFX effects, the appearance of the French woman's team has been faked in the 1st part of the compilation, to serve a strong message. These skillful women's actions, without VFX, are replayed in the 2nd part of the video, so that the audience can admire them, stripped away from the filter of their gender stereotypes.

To orchestrate the virality of the campaign, we worked on the most engaging platform for football fans: Twitter. Since our intent was to expose them to women’s actions with the filter of their gender bias turned off, we decided to go all the way and prank them. We capitalized on the account of an influencer with medium visibility but very high engagement. This Twitter account first posted only the first part of the Compil des Bleues (= the women's technical moves 'disguised' as men's players), before revealing the trickery a few hours later to its community by posting it in full…

Engagement surrounding these 2 tweets was very high, kick-starting mainstream media PR in France: within a day of the tweet, 8 mainstream media outlets were picking up on the video. This meticulous orchestration allowed the Compil to go viral, first in Europe, then around the world.

In addition to the prank/reveal launch, the content itself had to be crafted to trick our audience: of course, with indetectable VFX in the first part of the video, but also with a fast-paced editing, completely mimicking the style of online best-of videos. The final video’s quality was even downgraded, to have the exact same feel these best-of videos have: most of them are ripped by football fans, with low to medium quality footage from matches. The final touch to our illusion was the soundtrack, with an high BPM and an epic feel that brought the ruse together.