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Whenever the Croatian national football team participates in the World or the European cup, there is never enough tickets for all the croatian fans that would like to go to the matches and support their team. In 2012, Ožujsko beer, a sponsor of the national football team, decided to help the fans that will stay at home - support their team. The atmosphere in the media about the Croatian football team was not perfect, and many doubted that the team even had a large number of supporters during that year. Ozujsko wanted to change this atmosphere and show that there in fact are many people that support the team.
Recognising projects that truly represent the Brand image is key
We have been working with Ozujsko beer for 3 years at the time, and when we were approached by Petar Pavić, who had the initial idea that ideally fitted in the Marketing plan of this brand, we recognised its potential and formed a team that would work with Petar, to further develop his idea. What Petar had in mind was to create a large flag with famous croatian squares, and fill each square with thousands of football fans faces. This flag was then to be shipped to Poland and be unveiled at the first Croatian match. That way thousands of faces of people that could not go, would be added to those already on the bleachers, united to support our team. We wanted our players to see all these faces supporting them.
It’s great on paper, but how do you get it to really work?
The immediate problem was how to enable thousands of people to participate, send their photos that can later be used to print the large flag, and we wanted this flag to be, big, and we mean really big, as big as possible in fact :) When someone mentioned that there could be some rules on how big this thing can be and still be allowed to be brought in the stadium, we contacted FIFA and found out what the limits were. It turns out we had 500 square meters to play with. Not bad. Not bad at all.
So back to the problem, how to get thousands of real people’s faces on the flag, and make the process easy and fun so that the word would spread and even more people would take part?
Making the process fun (for us, fun = digital)
Ožujsko beer had over 120.000 thousand fans on Facebook, and so we decided to enable this crowd to be the first to get the chance to be on the flag. We designed and produced a Facebook application that worked as a large map made of red and white squares (the croatian visual trademark). Every Facebook user could with only one click opt in to be on the flag, but additionally they could also write a motivational message for the team. We knew the number of faces would grow quickly, so we made this checkered map interactive. Fans could search for their friends or famous people on the flag, and see what they wrote on the flag. Of course fans had the option to share their contribution with their social circle, and by doing so, call more people to do the same.
A take home version of the mega-flag
To provide an additional, even more personal experience, we created a separate mode of the app that enabled the facebook users to create a custom smaller version of the flag that was populated with just their friends. Options were provided to download, print or make this custom flag their Facebook cover or desktop wallpaper image. Soon enough, there were red and white checkers everywhere!
Bringing online and offline worlds together
To spread the world about what we are doing, we also produced a large screen app that was displayed on one of the capital city’s main squares. The big screen displayed Facebook fans that were already on the flag and called the passers by to participate. To make it easy for them, there were locations on the square were hosteses helped the willing football fans to immediatly put their face on the flag. A simple Windows app was prepared that would capture the face of the fan and enable him to write a message. 10 seconds later his image and message would appear on the big screen, and become part of the flag of course.
Authenticity always brings recognition by the fans
During the campaign that lasted for 30 days, over 10.000 people placed an image of their face on the flag. “Talking about” stats on the official Ozujsko beer facebook page rose by 450%.
Even though “liking” the page was not a condition to take part, as it is never in any of the Facebook apps we create, the number of fans rose for over 22.000 in under 30 days. To put this in perspective, in Croatia, any Facebook activity (not considering classic advertising) that can generate over 10.000 fans in under a month is a success. Our flag generated double that number but more importantly these new fans were not enticed by any rewards nor forced to like the page to participate in the action. These were actual people that recognised the brand as something they can relate to and chose to be a part of the community.
The interactive flag was awarded as the best cross-media project in the country on the biggest Digital Marketing Festival in Croatia.
