The noise surrounding a global sporting event is seismic. Dominated by action on the pitch and fiercely governed sponsorships.

Despite co-hosting the event this put significant restriction on how TNZ could leverage the tournament.

We needed to get football fans around the world to turn their eyes towards New Zealand.

Our co-hosts Australia were also our biggest competitors.

Australia had historically had much bigger media budget, they were hosting the tournament final, and the Australian national team were likely to go further in the competition than New Zealand.

While the tournament represented a once-in-a-generation opportunity to get exposure, New Zealand found itself the underdog.

Finding the back of the net was far from easy.

Brief:

Outplay sponsors, co-hosts and the media to win the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023™ and earn disproportionate attention for New Zealand as hosts.

Bring ‘the beautiful game’ to the most beautiful place on earth.

We created a one-of-a-kind exhibition match, bringing the beautiful game to the most beautiful place on earth.

The content rich PR campaign was unmistakeably Kiwi. We built a full-sized replica FIFA pitch (entirely by hand!) at the base of Aoraki Mount Cook to stage an exhibition match between two teams of local girls.

The match was the perfect canvas to show off New Zealand’s breath-taking landscape to the world, while showing how football fever had spread across the nation.

We embraced indigenous Māori culture, working with local iwi and in keeping with New Zealand’s environmental credentials the pitch was created and dismantled without leaving a trace on this beautiful land.

Our key message was simple:

New Zealand welcomes the world – promising to host “the beautiful game” in the most beautiful place on earth.

The strategy was built on 3 principles:

Beat the crowd:

Noise around the tournament would only grow. We stood the best chance of standing out if we could score an early goal.

Cross the language barrier:

Our priority tourism markets were Australia, USA, China, UK, Germany and Japan. We needed to think global. Success depended on a campaign that could cross borders without translation.

Be unmistakeable:

Our campaign needed to be undeniably New Zealand. In this brief time, we captured attention, we needed to tell a story about the country – our land, our people and our culture - which would inspire deeper discovery of both the campaign and tourism in New Zealand.

The campaign was powered by a rich suite of media to give publications across the world freedom and flexibility to build their own story:

- Stunning photography of the pitch and location

- Film 1: Journey to The Beautiful Game – the story of a local Kiwi girl on her way to the

exhibition match of a lifetime.

- Film 2: The Beautiful Game – our protagonist meets the teams and plays in the match

- Broadcast footage pack – Including interviews with NZ national team players, the local girls

and the referee.

The campaign launched a month before from the start of the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023™, providing the unofficial kicking off the tournament.

We ran three tiers of pitching to maximise coverage:

- Newswires: AP, Reuters

- Priority Influencers and Key opinion leaders

- Local market pitching

‘The Beautiful Game’ captured the attention of the world.

The campaign delivered earned advertising value (EAV) of $16.75M - almost 170% of the initial target, providing a media ROI of 33:1.

Our exhibition match between local schoolgirls delivered a reach of over two billion, more than the final of the 2019 Women’s World Cup (1.12 billion).

Performance in our priority markets exceeded our expectations accounting for 70% of reach. The campaign was featured in major global news publications all over the world including The Guardian, the Washington Post and the Daily Mail.

Sentiment analysis showed 94% positive sentiment around the content.

QUOTES:

“Is this the most beautiful football field in the world? Kiwis create a stunning ground at the foot of the country's famous mountains as Women's World Cup nears” - Daily Mail AU

“It’s often called “the beautiful game” – but this might be the most stunning football match ever played.” - Stuff

“A field of dreams for peak performance at World Cup." - The Australian