ITV needed a standout campaign to get existing rugby fans excited, attract new viewers and cut through the noise around the tournament.

Rugby has often played second fiddle to football in the hearts & minds of ITV viewers, many of whom viewing the sport as complicated and violent.

We were challenged with using a modest budget to position the tournament as the most competitive & unpredictable in recent history. In a sea of loud, expensive sports campaigns, ITV's IMPOSSIBLE TO PREDICT campaign veered away from the well trodden sports tropes and instead used beautifully illustrated & intriguing tarot cards to ignite real conversation across the country.

Each illustration began with an initial concept forged through extensive research. Then Illustrator Yousef Sabry and Creative Directors Shane O'Neill & Jack McPartland worked as a team to flesh out the visual approach for each card. Using Procreate for iPad, Yousef hand-sketched each design in his own unique style: merging surrealism, symbolism and anthropomorphic beings.

The big challenge was to make the twenty, unique designs work as a complementary set whilst also working as pair combinations for each and every match. Through constant collaboration & development the team ensured each design had a strong, original idea behind it, that each card was completely unique to the rest of the pack but that all cards were linked through an over-arching creative language.