Brazilians love football. And the FIFA World Cup is the time to show and celebrate all that passion. From street art to flags in cars, to the most wanted and desired asset of all: the official national jersey (which last year was also a fashion trend on TikTok). The result? Everyone wanted theirs – lucky Nike.

But in 2022, Brazilians were facing major inflation, most felt in supermarkets and restaurants: food and beverages saw an 11.64% price increase in the year, thus above 2021’s 7.94%. That’s huge.

And Flash, an HRtech that has reinvented the food and meal voucher – that by Brazilian labor law is something of a mandatory benefit for all companies to their employees - could help Brazilians while standing out from traditional and outdated brands that held 95% of the market. Because, different from all food and meal vouchers, Flash can be used to buy anything.

Brazilians wanted their national jersey. But once they saw the price, that desire became a disappointment: Brazilians were struggling to buy food. Paying R$350 for a jersey was out of the question, so they started to complain on social media.  

Flash was still a small brand that needed to stand out from their competitors to increase their awareness without having enough budget to take part in such an event like FIFA World Cup. What if Flash could hack this conversation and help Brazilians get their jersey while increasing their awareness? 

So Flash decided to sponsor not the event, nor a huge broadcast, but Brazilians that were craving for their jersey, but couldn’t pay for it. "Cashback For Your Jersey’s Back” gave a 50% refund to every fan who purchased the jersey on Nike’s ecommerce using a Flash card, customized it with “FLASH” and posted it on social media, tagging Flash.

The end of the year is an important period for Flash and its category since it’s during that time that companies start reviewing their providers and planning for next year. But at the end of 2022, Brazilians had only one thing on their mind: the World Cup.

Probably every brand in Brazil tries to hack or sponsor this major event. After all, it is a powerful passion point. The challenge was finding a relevant way to connect with consumers since the clutter of brands and messages is a real thing.

And we found it. Brazilians were complaining a lot about the price of the most expensive official national Jersey ever – since they could fill their fridges and pantries with that money – food that you could buy using Flash. Our strategy was to join that conversation and turn Brazilians into more than our target, but also our media.

Cashback For Your Jersey’s Back” is a promotional campaign that ran during the 2022 World Cup and used the Brazilian fans’ jerseys as a medium in exchange for a 50% cashback discount. To do so, we hacked one of the biggest e-commerce on earth: Nike’s. You just had to access it, have a Brazilian jersey customized with FLASH on the back, buy it using Flash and post pictures of it on social networks, thus receiving the cashback and becoming literally sponsored by Flash.

The more people posted their pictures, the more Flash increased its reach on social networks. And when Nike decided to ban the name “Flash” from being used to customize the jerseys, we kept the promotion going as fans started customizing the jerseys themselves.

At the end of the activation, 3.273 Brazilian National Team jerseys were customized with Flash's name. By posting on their social networks, consumers helped promote the Flash brand, increasing our reach. Also, we observed an increase of 13% on sporting goods transactions using Flash.

Results during the campaign: 2300% increase in brand mentions

410MM impressions

5.1MM interactions