As both Sweden and Iran qualified for the World Cup, Oddset wanted to do something to

acknowledge this great accomplishment, and at the same time create a closer connection between the one hundred thousand Iranians living in Sweden and the Oddset brand.

Many people from different cultures have come to live in Sweden during the past decades, making cultural identity a hot topic. With the World Cup coming up, we knew that national identity would be on many people’s minds, as tradition makes for football fans to cheer for their home country. As both Sweden and Iran qualified for the World Cup, a lot of Swedish-Iranians would have a difficult choice before them: which one of the two most popular national teams in Sweden do they support?

Oddset created a shirt with a Swedish outside and an Iranian inside. Or an Iranian outside and a Swedish inside. With the shirt, Oddset showed that we not only understand and know our target group, the two most popular national teams in Sweden, but also relates to the dilemma of what team to pick. By doing this, and letting our target group win shirts by proving their national team-knowledge, we proved our concept “The more you know, the more you win”.

We quickly learned that, although we are THE sportsbetting brand in Sweden, we are not the no1 brand for those born outside of Sweden. We also found that Swedes with an Iranian history define themselves as bicultural. Having a strong connection and love for both countries, defining themselves as Swedes is equally important as defining themselves as Iranian. Many of them felt divided regarding which country to cheer for in the World Cup.

Therefore the base of our strategy was to help them with this problem, and by doing so in an emotional way, and by the use of digital media; bring the Oddset brand closer to the World Cup and their hearts and minds. We also made it our priority to include some kind of contest in our campaign, to make sure that we wouldn’t just inform, but also activate the target group.

We custom made Sweden/Iran-shirts that had two sides, one Swedish and one Iranian side. The shirts was made from two original shirts, sewn together. For one week, the shirts could be won by answering what the numbers on the respective shirts side stood for. The numbers were referring to the world cup 1994 where Sweden came third, and an amazing comeback in 1997, taking Iran to the 1998 world cup in France. To make all Iranian-swedes aware, we made a film and spread it in relevant channels, social media as well as in news papers. We also sent it out to Swedish-Iranian influencers for them to show and share their support for their two national teams during match days. And with an unexpected American Embargo on Iran, the shirt in our campaign became a solution to another problem too since there was nowhere you could buy an Iranian shirt.

Considering that our target group was extremely narrow, we are really proud of the results.

The film was shown over 500 000 times with more than 500 comments. Results for the campaign showed a high brand liking within the target group with 67% compared to 33% before the campaign. But most of all, it showed a large engagement and many people that even thanked us for the initiative.