This was a global social platform with the main experience based in Brazil. Because the Happiness Flag was a part of the FIFA World Cup opening match Run of Show, we were restricted by the main local broadcaster in Brazil (Globo) as well as the property owner (FIFA). The flag itself was unbranded, but was created out of our brand campaign visual identity system. Overcoming these obstacles, we were still able to share our story through the hundreds of thousands of Flag participants as well as the millions who watched the broadcast and visited the website after.

We created a Flag to unveil on the pitch that was representative of everybody, regardless of team or country. By asking fans to submit photos of themselves using #HappinessFlag, we harnessed the power of football to bring together people from different races, places, classes and creeds. The fan-submitted photos were then stitched together to form the world’s largest Photomosaic Flag, truly transforming the World Cup into the World’s Cup. After the unveiling, fans were driven online again to the Happiness Flag website, where they could zoom in on their individual pictures and share on social media.

Happiness Flag created a user-generated platform that was capable of supporting every country in the world, linking to a live experiential event. This success embodied the objective of turning the World Cup into the World’s Cup. Additionally, fans were active participants in the FIFA World Cup™ before, during and after the opening ceremony, rather than passive viewers, in a never-been-done-before way.

Metrics include:

- 2.8 billion people viewed the live unveiling

- 3.5 million images in the Flag

- 223,206 fan-submitted photos

- 207 countries

- 03 million online impressions

- 3 million Retweets

- 1.5 million digital Flag views