Pacaembu, one of the most iconic football stadiums in Brazil, was undergoing renovation and its seats, which witnessed historic moments in football, would go to waste. That is, more plastic dumped into the garbage, in a world that has already produced 8.3 billion tons of plastic and only recycled 9% of it. In a World Cup year, the rich history of those seats deserved a better destiny.

Brief:

The furniture store Tok&Stok wanted to change this game, upcycling discarded seats into design chairs and transforming history into education, reverting profits for underprivileged children.

Objectives:

Increasing the perceived value of the chairs: both as a unique piece of design, as well as highlighting their great historical value. With a low budget campaign around US$ 100k.

Project Scale:

10 chairs were signed by great former players and 10 posters were produced, one for each. But the repercussions were national.

Tok&Stok stablished a partnership with Pacaembu and through upcycling, what would become garbage was transformed trash into collector’s item. A design chair with a unique history. And all the profits with its sale were reverted to two institutions that help to give education to thousands of underprivileged children.

To increase this value and help even more children, football legends were invited to tell great moments that they lived on the stadium, in a content series, and sign chairs to be auctioned. Even the King of football Pelé signed one of them, in his last gesture in life.

In addition, we created posters for each of these legends depicting great plays and moments lived by them in Pacaembu.

The posters were exhibited with the signed chairs at Tok&Stok store and business owners were invited to see the collection and participate in a beneficent auction of the posters and signed chairs.

A week before the chair sales began, content with the stories of former players entered the brand's social networks and digital media formats. The contents revived the great stories of Pacaembu and immediately attracted the interest of the Brazilian public, who are passionate about football, as well as the press. Some influencers and sports programs were gifted some of the chairs and their unboxing further spread the word and desire to have a chair with so much history at home or in the office.

The posters were displayed with the chairs in a Tok&Stok store, enhancing the design appeal of the activation. We used our clients database to invite business owners to see the collection and participate in a beneficent auction.

To visit the exhibition at the last floor, they had to go trough the store having the chance to see all the different office furniture collections.

We invited an artist to illustrate each of the Football legends with a color palette inspired by the color of the seats that for decades watched them play at the stadium.

They were designed in the shape of Pacaembu tickets with texts celebrating the greatest feats of each player from the chair’s point of view.

They were printed on a metalic paper with details specialy crafted to make the players history shine and ad more value to the auctioned chairs.

The posters were displayed with the chairs in one of the Tok&Stok stores, attracting public attention and media interest, which received wide coverage.

Each poster measuring approximately 40 x 100 cm, accompanied the respective chairs at the auction. And a copy of each was sent to each player.

We used our clients database to invite business owners to see the collection and participate in a beneficent auction.

The chairs generated great desire in the millions of Brazilians who are passionate about football and sold out in a matter of hours. Even though it’s price original price: R$ 1.499,00 for a chair / R$1.799,00 for a stool, were initially considered high.

The posters helped the auctioned chairs increase their value up to six times, exponentially increasing the amount raised for the institutes.

The exhibition of the posters and signed chairs drove a lot more traffic to the store and helped to increase sales of other collections.

We created a WIN – WIN – WIN cycle:

Win the society by helping to provide education for thousands of children.

Win the environment because tons of plastic have ceased to become garbage.

Win Tok&Stok by reinforcing its socio-environmental commitment.

This initiative could serve as inspiration for other events that use temporary stadiums such as the World Cup itself.