Stuff History

Background

For the first time in 32 years, the Socceroos qualified for the World Cup and Nike had an opportunity to connect with football enthusiasts in Australia through their sponsorship of the home team. The aim of the campaign was to rally support for the Socceroos in their opening group matches and to stir up Australian fans’ passion for their team and the Nike brand.

Idea

Australians love an underdog and thrive on proving history wrong. So when the Socceroos played previous champions Brazil, Nike supported them by saying 'Stuff History'. They brought a fictitious character called ‘History’ to life, introducing him via TV spots and at events and bringing him to the attention of the online community through the Stuff History website, Nike’s joga.com website, blogs, and MySpace. ‘History’ would rant about how the Socceroos didn’t have a chance, provoking fans to respond. The launch of the Stuff History campaign coincided with the Australia vs. Greece friendly game. Events were staged at key outdoor congregation points including a huge interactive display in Melbourne’s Federation Square. Visitors could play games based on ‘stuffing history’, such as kicking footballs at a massive target of his face, and teams armed with Hypertag technology deployed mobile content to people’s phones via infrared.

Online, the Stuff History website contained a dynamic message board which allowed Socceroos fans to post responses to History's rants. Top 10 comments were selected to appear on the site each day, with the best rant winning a Stuff History t-shirt. History regularly infiltrated the message board with his own negative comments, spurring ongoing responses. The website also contained all the TVCs, a detailed back story for the History character and a range of downloadable content designed to keep the audience talking about the campaign. Targeted online media was used to support the TV activity and drive traffic to the site. A range of soccer sites formed the backbone of the activity, supported by tactical paid advertising on search engines to leverage natural interest around the World Cup. Advertising creative was highly interactive, allowing users to ‘torture’ History within the banners.

Results

The interactive ads were shown more than eight million times, driving more than 64,000 site visits. The creative delivered a click through rate over three time’s the industry average. In total, 74,312 visitors engaged with the site. Users posted thousands of responses to History’s rants and watched the TVCs more than 50,000 times. Thousands also engaged with him within communities online where he developed hundreds of ‘friends’. Promotional only t-shirts were sold on eBay for five times their value and ‘Stuff History’ was even entered as a reference within wikipedia.com.

Target Audience

Male, aged 15 to 38

Our Thoughts

There’s been quite a lot of this lately – personifying abstractions. ESPN depicted ‘knowledge’ has a hairy ball on feet. Less successfully, ‘appetite’ has been turned into a blue ball of fluff. And here, ‘history’ is an ancient old git telling Australia they won’t succeed at the World Cup. As it turned out, ‘history’ was absolutely right.