Football or father?
Remede Pharma
Issue 37 | December 2015
Agency
BBDO Belgium
Creative Team
Art Director Frederic Zouag Copywriter Nicolas Gaspart Creative Director Sebastien De Valck, Arnaud Pitz Graphic Designer Christophe Malotaux Illustrator Frederic Zouag
Production Team
Print & TV Producer Patricia Van De Kerckhove Film Production Company Witloof Productions
Other Credits
Client, Love Condom Géraldine Wirtz Account Manager Lore Desmet Account Director Isabel Peeters Social Strategy Stefan Ceunen Photographer Jef Boes
Date
September 2015
Background
Love Condom was a Belgian brand of condoms. It was a challenger brand without the sort of budgets of the big players such as Durex.
Idea
In 1986, Belgium got to the quarter-finals of the football World Cup in Mexico. It was the country's best result at the tournament ever, an event of great significance.
In June 2016, Belgium would be taking part in the European Championships, a few weeks of football no Belgian would want to miss.
Exactly nine months before the opening game of the European Championships, Love Condom posted a video on YouTube. Titled 'Football of Father' it was the tragic story of Philippe, who missed the epic game back in 1986 because he was at the hospital while his wife was giving birth to their child. In the film, he warned other Belgian males not to make the same mistake. Nine months before the Championships, wear a condom.
The problem was, how to get people to watch the video and talk about it.
Leading sports journalists were mailed a calendar for the weeks exactly nine months before the games.
Condoms were stuck over the key dates. So, because the first match was to be played on 10th June 2016, the calendar provided a condom to be used on 10th September 2015.
The final was to be played on July 10th 2016, so a free sample was provided for use on 19th October.
The calendar was mailed to all sports journalists in the country, who went on to talk about it during their programmes, airing the ad as they did so.
Results
The cost of creating and producing the calendar was 1500 Euros. It was delivered to 20 influential sports journalists. As a result, Love Condom got a total of 5 minutes and 7 seconds of prime-time TV coverage. The story was taken up by the press and online media with PR worth over 350,000 Euros.
Love Condom's number of Facebook fans increased 17%. Sales increased by +8 %.
Our Thoughts
Nike have become specialists at hijacking the Olympics, while never spending a dime on sponsorship themselves. Now here’s a brand cheekily hijacking an event nine months before it even happens. We’ll have to see if statistics reveal a drop in the number of babies born in Belgium in June/July. In the meantime, here’s a great instance of how a small brand can punch way above its weight – not by identifying the key influencers but through the cheeky cleverness of their idea. Influencers know how valuable they are so getting them to want to share the joke with their millions of followers – free – is a testament to creativity.