In 2011, the most important European music event (the Eurovision Song Contest/ESC) took place in Germany, with Lufthansa as one of the sponsors. Our brief was to develop a campaign, that:• Set Lufthansa into a scene, in a strong & likeable way;• Used the event to build up sympathy for the brand in a mainly young and party-oriented audience;• Created buzz around Lufthansa’s sponsorship.Challenges: - Big events are sponsored by big companies. So what? The fact of sponsoring (and placing a logo somewhere) isn’t something that really attracts consumers' attention. Besides that, opportunities to place the sponsors were extremely limited. So we had to find something completely different that was new, attractive and thrilling enough for the audience to talk about Lufthansa.Solution:Instead of communicating it in a serious way, we created a joke, seriously played until the end. Lufthansa sent a 44th participant to ESC, 'Molvanîan Hairline', coming from the fake-country 'Molvanîa'.Without seeding, Lufthansa achieved with Molvanîan Hairline:• More than 20 interviews in international press and TV (i.e. an 8-minute-long feature at Russian ESC-TV);• Thousands of views and comments on YouTube and Facebook;• Hundreds of editorial contributions in leading newspapers and news-portals, including also the official ESC-Homepage;• About 8m earned-media-contacts;• And the highlight was the permission received for a gig of Molvanîan Hairline (in Lufthansa-outfits) on the official ESC-fanstage on the finals (with tens of thousands of visitors in the audience).

In several newspapers, Lufthansa and Molvanîan Hairline were declared 'winners of the hearts'.

Starting points were a press-kit, sent to 50 journalists, saying that 'Molvanîan Hairline' will take part at ESC 2011, introducing bands and songs and encouraging the addressees to ask for interviews. Besides that, Molvanîan Hairline presented themselves on microsites on facebook and YouTube.The band went to Dusseldorf 4 weeks in advance of the final event and behaved like all the real participants, doing promotions, playing gigs, etc. and in this way created a huge fanbase both attending the concerts but also following the band on facebook and Twitter.Only 2 days before ESCs finals, 'the secret of singing Molvanîans' (as Germany’s biggest yellow-paper wrote) was disclosed.

Without seeding, Lufthansa achieved with Molvanîan Hairline:• More than 20 interviews in international press and TV (i.e. an 8-minute-long feature at Russian ESC-TV);• Thousands of views and comments on YouTube and Facebook;• Hundreds of editorial contributions (on- and offline) in leading newspapers and news-portals, including the official ESC-Homepage;• About 8m earned-media-contacts;• And the highlight was the permission received for a gig of Molvanîan Hairline (in Lufthansa-outfits) on the official ESC-fanstage on the finals (with tens of thousands of visitors in the audience) In several newspapers Lufthansa and Molvanîan Hairline were declared 'winners of the hearts'.