Corinthians is the biggest brazilian soccer club. Its history spans over 100 years, with titles left and right in all major competitions, local, regional and global. The team also boasts the largest fan base in Brazil and sits currently among the top 20 clubs in the world. And despite all this, the Corinthians women’s professional soccer team struggles to get sponsored.

As a pioneer of all major social causes in sports and as one of the most democratic teams in Brazil, Corinthians stands at the forefront of the fight for more gender representation and respect for women’s soccer. So, our briefing was simple: tackle the sexism and prejudice around the sport and gather enough sponsorships to get the team running for a full season.

Women’s soccer suffer from two things: lack of sponsors and prejudice. But what if we mixed these two things into one solution?

We created a special Corinthians jersey with real-life sexist comments silked exactly where sponsors should be, to showcase what these women go through every day, while simultaneously evidencing the lack of financial support they receive.

The athletes wore the jersey during an official game, creating PR news everywhere. Afterwards, we sent extensive mailing, contacted influencers and asked people to share the campaign video, all to convince brands to sponsor the team and cover the hateful messages with their brands.

In the next game, the players went in wearing the Cover the Prejudice jerseys with the phrases covered by supporting brands, proving that we can change the landscape of the sport.

By changing the jersey, we started a movement.

When you talk about soccer, you talk about a broad audience, specially in Brazil. Naturally, our target consisted of people of all ages, both sexes. What we did was divide them into clusters, with particular directives for each one of them.

First, we had the general public, which we activated through a viral online video.

Secondly, we had influencers and personalities, which we activated through direct mailing.

Then, we had journalists and news outlets, which we activated through press releases and in some special cases, mailing as well.

And last but not least, we had to talk with female CEOs from various companies, to invite them to sponsor the team and cover the hateful phrases in the jersey with their brands, which we did by direct mailing.

Those four clusters worked in unison to transform the Cover the Prejudice project into a huge movement, in a matter of weeks.

Cover the Prejudice’s implementation spanned three months and was done entirely in partnership with Corinthians’s marketing team. From the get-go, they bought in and counted with the personal support of all athletes that were part of the female roster.

The project timeline had a three week window, divided in equal parts.

The first week consisted of press releases, a viral online video and mailing to key players in news outlets.

The second week consisted on the coverage of the two official games themselves (scale), where the players wore the jerseys, along with mailing to influencers and female CEOs of various brands, with which we negotiated the sponsorships.

The third part consisted of international press releases, local clipping and further online boosting of the results. With one jersey, we sparked a huge conversation.

There was no media placement.

Cover The Prejudice main goal was to fill out the women’s professional team sponsor spots for the year. We almost reached it. Along with that, a number of other milestones were reached:

- 69MM IMPRESSIONS IN ONE WEEK

- 45MM OF TOTAL REACH

- 89% POSITIVE MENTIONS

- 120+ ARTICLES OVER 6 COUNTRIES

- 1 CONFIRMED SPONSOR

- 10+ BRANDS NEGOTIATING