Dutch public television doesn't allow the mentioning of brandnames during regular shows. FIFA strictly prohibits non-official partners to associate themselves with the World Cup event. This means brands can't even name the World Cup in their communication or use footage from the event. If a brand wants to 'highjack' the news around the World Cup, you have to navigate through a legal minefield.

We anticipated that the World Cup goals would be the talk of the town the day after the game. People would want to see them again and again. When they searched on YouTube, our interpretation of the goal was in the top results.

Furthermore, the content was initially spread by mentioning famous sportsjournalists blogs and other influencers with our video's. They all loved and published about it. From there it spread like wildfire to newspapers and television as well, reaching our target demographic during their daily media consumption.

In a campaign period of 4 weeks, we created 2 video's that went viral, gathering about 9 million views. In the Netherlands, the video dominated the news and it was picked up worldwide as well. Featured on blogs, newspapers and several television shows, including the 2 biggest Dutch talkshows.

5 take-aways:

1. One viral could be luck, two virals are a well thought-out strategy. Anticipating on the news and search behaviour pays off.

2. Relevance. Link with Stabilo is very logical, conveys brandvalues and the name of the brand is incorporated in the content itself, but doesn't interfere with the message.

3. Speed. Lots of brands create timely still content, but to pull off branded content video that follows on events this quick, is still quite a novelty.

4. Beat the usual suspects. If you don't have the production- or mediabudget, creativity becomes even more important. Most watched commercial in the Netherlands, after Nike.

5. Shake up the industry. The dealerships that Stabilo work with are very conservative. The client said the campaign helped to open up the mindset of keyplayers and created new possibilities for them and getting praise from the highest Stabilo marketing boss himself.