Bigger concept:

Let's connect the topic of clearing mines/UXO with the world of football. Urging fans to help #ClearThePitch.

Because:

1. Football is arguably the world's biggest sport. It's a huge industry, a huge popular culture topic and also a hugely loved hobby.

2. There is a quite shocking connection: in countries affected, it's extremely dangerous for kids to just go outside and play some ball.

3. One of the most evil remnants of wars are cluster bomblets that actually look like balls - making them difficult to spot and easy to mistake for kids.

Core creative piece:

Let's make a shareable and powerful video that comes across like a highly stylized big football brand ad - hijacking the iconography and music of football -, that takes a disturbing turn with an actual mine victim pointing out just how difficult it is to spot cluster-munitions/mines. To trigger sharing of #ClearThePitch.

On International Day of Mine Awareness DCA went live in Denmark. The unique angle and link to football made it possible to be present on Danish Morning Shows and in daily news-media. Within hours DCA and #ClearThePitch dominated the topic on this day.

The mass-media audience was pushed to watch the film online (YouTube, Facebook, Website) and then support the spread by linking, posting, tweeting. To further enhance the instant spread three additional tactics were deployed:

1) 6 Danish football clubs had been won beforehand to support the campaign, now urging their fans and followers to view, like, share, support.

2) Basically all other Mine Action NGO (and many other humanitarian NGO) had been won to support the spread on this day via their social channels.

3) Via the social timer Thunderclap a tweet wave was created to go live a few days later during the Euro-Cup Quarterfinal.

When the Danish Foreign Minister Christian Jensen tweeted his support of #ClearThePitch, DCA knew it had succeeded. But the results were much bigger than that – in launch-week:

- instant growth of visits to DCA main-page by 89%

- over 1.2 million social reach

- over 360k twitter users reached on one day via Thunderclap

- 78% external, new visitors saw video

- mainline&sports media coverage in Denmark, Asia and the UK

- 6 Danish and 1 Spanish major league football club share campaign

- fanclubs in Denmark, Germany, the UK and Spain support and share

- hundreds of NGO retweet and post (including the UN)

- also: hundreds of industry sites pick up the film and cover the story

The results have made this the most successful campaign ever run by DCA –allowing DCA to now build on a powerful platform to further push global awareness and donations.