The 2011 Carling Black Label Cup promotion in South Africa was the most successful in SAB's history.

In its first edition, the promotion generated over 10 million text votes - 3 times more than the final of the local version of Idols. The 2012 cup saw more votes cast (19 million) for team selection than there were for political parties in the last South African general election!

Already the ‘Be the Coach’ campaign has won SABMiller's highest internal accolade, the Gold Mercatus for marketing excellence, and has become the globally most-awarded interactive campaign during 2011/12 including gold, silver and two bronzes at Cannes.

It has also won high praise in the mobile marketing community for innovative use of low-tech solutions to engage feature phone users.

And, as this case study shows, the campaign forced re-appraisal of a brand that had been in decline for 5 years - driving sales and sentiment, culminating in a return to growth.

The CBL Cup could’ve been just another routine big brand soccer sponsorship, but it became this astonishingly effective piece of marketing, and a world-first, when it was delivered with a highly innovative and creative twist.

A series of key insights into local soccer fans – especially their deep-seated belief that they could do a better job than the foreigners entrusted with coaching their teams - led us towards giving the supporters of the country’s two biggest clubs the chance to select their starting XI’s for the new CBL Cup and to influence in-game substitutions via texts.

Every CBL bottle top during the promotion period gave the buyer one vote.

Thanks to CBL, regular fans could ‘Be the Coach’ - a perfect fit with our brand strategy which was to make ordinary men feel like champions.

To make this “impossible” idea a reality, we delivered ground-breaking technology solutions - including a USSD interface, and special mobisite and microsite applications - which enabled users of feature phones to enjoy an immersive brand experience.

The idea enraged purists - thereby generating massive PR - but completely engaged consumers who voted in their millions. 82,000 fans attended the game.

Because every entry was linked to beer sales, Carling Black Label had notable market share growth in the short term and then gained a demonstrable increase in positive consideration which came together, in the longer term, to return a huge but declining brand to growth.