Whatever It Is, Cancel It

Background

The idea was to advertise the biggest football match of the year, without showing any football. Instead, there was one, simple message. Whatever it is, cancel it. Using #CantMissIt BT Sport offered fans the chance to win a VIP Champions League Final Experience in Madrid. All they had to do was tell them what they’d cancel to be there. Father’s funeral. Dream job interviews. Meeting biological parents for the first time. Anything to see the game. But eventually a winner was picked. Alexandre Simionel cancelled his child’s first birthday in Austria with family flying in from across the globe. Nice one Alexandre. Once the activation had gone live and fans were gripped, their bold typographical OOH campaign was launched, flooding major rail, road and underground locations over three days from 30 May to 1 June.

Idea

History told us that in 64 years of Europe’s top club competition, an all English final had only happened once. In 2019, a decade after the last one, history was made once more. Yet, for just 34 minutes of football, it could have been a very different story. Heading into the 56th minute of Liverpool’s semi-final second leg with Barcelona and the 96th minute of Tottenham vs. Ajax, it was looking like the top teams from Spain and Holland would be battling it out in Madrid. No one expected it to happen. But it did. And millions of football fans were left wondering, “what am I doing on 1 June?” Inspired by a single viral post on Mums Net, the campaign played on a very real yet unprecedented tension. Everyone’s busy in June. 12% of all weddings happen. 53,000 people getting hitched. An average of 100 guests each. That’s 530,000 people. Not to mention the 54,571 babies born. Hundreds of thousands of birthdays. Including the Queen’s. BBQs. Bar Mitzvahs. That got them thinking. What plans would fans sacrifice to be there in Madrid and how could BT Sport help them cancel them? The game spoke for itself. So, the biggest football match of the year was advertised without showing any football. Instead, they had one simple message. Whatever it is, cancel it. Using #CantMissIt BT Sport offered fans the chance to win a VIP Champions League Final Experience in Madrid. All they had to do was tell them what they’d cancel to be there. Father’s funeral. Dream job interviews. Meeting biological parents for the first time. Anything to see the game. But eventually a winner was picked. Alexandre Simionel cancelled his child’s first birthday in Austria with family flying in from across the globe. Nice one Alexandre. Once the activation had gone live and fans were gripped, their bold typographical OOH campaign was launched, flooding major rail, road and underground locations over three days from 30 May to 1 June. The moment the first tweet went out, social media below up. It caused quite a stir at BT too. CEO Mark Allera loved it so much he’d agreed to use the campaign to launch the new BT logo. 2.14 billion impressions worldwide. 45k mentions on Twitter - making BT Sport and #CantMissIt 3 x more talked about than the Champions League itself. With fans from Europe, North and South America, Asia and Australasia all wanting in. Over a million people visited the BT Sport website on the day of the final. Their highest volume of traffic ever on a single day. During Champions League Final week, the number of people searching for BT Sport leapt ahead of Sky. When the match finally came around, 11.8 million fans had decided to cancel everything and watch. The highest viewing figures in BT Sport’s six-year history. More than the BBC and ITV combined. Bill Shankley once said that “some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it's much more serious than that.” Over 40 years later, he was proved right.

Results

The campaign generated a massive 11.4b global impressions and helped deliver BT Sport’s biggest TV audience in its history.