To highlight the fact that NAB supported footballers at every stage of their journey, we honed in on the idea that most young kids playing Footy on a Saturday morning imagine themselves playing as their favourite footballer. Their kick, their movement, their goal celebration – they don’t just imagine themselves as their hero, in that moment they actually become them. We wanted to remind the public of the joy this imagination brings, and push the point that it’s not about the fame or the money, for these kids it’s purely about the game.

The idea was formed and the challenge accepted. We would need to search far and wide to find Auskickers who strangely and somewhat amusingly looked like the stars of today’s game.

Authenticity was key. Facial hair was made from real hair, tattoo transfers applied by a professional tattoo artist, and haircuts issued – the Mini Legends were born.

The Mini Legends video kicked off across social on 5th August and immediately went viral – reaching 1 million views within the first 24 hours. The video was played on TV during AFL games and on NAB’s AFL site – accompanied by the Mini Legends online game which invited the public to have a go at guessing all 18 Legends. The game was then plastered across banner suites on the AFL website, transforming MRECs into the first of 18 questions.

For Grand Final Day, we created two Snapchat filters that used custom geo-targeting to transform the Australian public’s faces into stars competing in the big game – with confetti and all.

And finally, at the ground we had a Mini Legends activation nudging football fans to compete against the mini heroes from our campaign, to see if they could out-jump them and hit the ball first.

Our Mini Legends campaign captured the public’s imagination and helped NAB dominate the conversation around AFL, earning 63.7% of online share of voice for AFL major sponsors – more than Toyota, the number one sponsor.

• Consideration to join NAB grew by 33% - a notoriously difficult shift amongst the big 4 banks in Australia.

• Facebook media spend predicted to give 9.7 million impressions, but sharing took us to 31 million impressions.

• Received 98% positive sentiment, record for NAB across any of their social channels.

• Media earned an additional 37.8m impressions, for total of 71 million impressions – most of which weren’t paid for.

• 75,000 people visited the website and played the Mini Legends game.

• 55% of all Australian Snapchat users interacted with our filter on Grand Final Day.

3,000 enthusiasts jumped against the Mini Legends during the Grand Final activation.