The European Champions League (UCL) is the most viewed sporting event in the world. 1bn fans. 67% from beyond Europe.

Heineken is the world’s most global beer brand. 192 countries.

Having sponsored UCL since 2005, by the 2015-16 season the brand had attained a remarkable 100% prompted awareness amongst fans.

But there was a problem. A big one.

This enormous brand equity was no longer driving consumption. Worse, UCL viewership was declining.

A big strategic shift was needed. It was time to leverage this equity to drive consumption.

The new campaign sought to change match viewing from an increasingly solitary behaviour into an unmissable social event worthy of a Heineken.

It did so by utilising the enormous prestige and charisma of one of the world’s most special communicators. Someone 1bn fans would listen to.

And they don’t come any more special than "The Special One" himself - Jose Mourinho.

But the world’s a big place. It has different time-zones, cultures, regulatory frameworks, preoccupations. So to make the campaign work we had to create a creative platform flexible enough to function not as one ‘Mega Ad’ but essentially as 81 unique campaigns.

The resulting modular film was supported with a library of over 3,000 pieces of digital and social content, and customizable templates for local markets to create their own topical content.

It was a daunting undertaking. Expensive. Complicated. With a lot riding on it. But we had the world’s greatest coach on our side.

The results were huge.

Volume sales in UCL markets grew by +13.7% in the 2016/17 season whilst they declined in the rest of the world by -3%. Penetration in UCL markets grew +11% year-on-year but fell by -9% everywhere else.

Very conservative estimates suggest that during the latest UCL season alone this new Jose Mourinho strategy added between €74.0mn and €120.5mn extra revenue over-and-above the cost of the campaign, translating to between €60.0mn and €68.7 pure profit on the bottom line. If we were to consider the lifetime value of these new drinkers, the full payback would be many, many times greater.

The moral of the story is simple…

Few brands get to talk to pretty much the entire planet. It’s the stuff of most marketer’s dreams. Until they have to do it. Then the realities of such a task get pretty scary.

To win on this kind of scale you need big thinking, big creative, and above all, the ability to strike a big personal connection with every single member of your 1bn audience.

As the man himself said, “money does not guarantee success. Winning is about feelings and intelligence.”

He was talking about football. But he could just as easily have been talking about global communications.

The Special One indeed.