LIDL, the leading grocery retailer in Europe, wanted to advertise their own brands in an innovative way during the world cup 2014 and at same time engage their 11 million Facebook fans. A difficult plan in a period where every brand is investing a massive budget to catch the consumers attention. This means that it is becoming increasingly harder to stick out in such a broad and packed brand landscape. In order to truly reach the target groups an innovative idea is necessary, which not only engages the user but at the same time also convinces him/her of the brand.

Imagine millions of people playing foosball at the same time and in the same place. A huge achievement in technology and engineering made this possible to create the largest foosball tournament ever. In a 6-week tournament, fans from 23 countries engaged online, shooting offline on real foosball tables. We engineered 50 electromechanical, web-connected foosball tables. In order to control them, we developed a Facebook web-application. No installation and no plugins were necessary, letting fans play against each other for their own countries from any location and any device. 300 cameras monitored every arena and every action from three different angles.

In the end more than 120 000 hours of branded content was displayed. The integrated campaign ensured massive awareness of 100 million media impressions and 4 million Euros in coverage through print, TV and online advertising. PR stunts created a huge media buzz. Italian World Cup winner Fabio Grosso proved his foosball skills in San Siro stadium. Player engagement of over 10 minutes per visit, countless shares on Facebook and twitter lead to an increase of more than 500.000 Fans. That is an increase of 350%. And the FIFA licensed Lidl Fan Collection was sold out in 2 weeks.