The Mexican Red Cross had to shut down several medical centers due to lack of donations.The pandemic situation left the organization at a critical point, losing more than 60% of the earnings compared to the previous year. At the same time it seemed like people's attention was focused on other things instead of helping the Red Cross. Popularity levels were hitting hard bottom. Taking in consideration this context, the brief was clear and loud recover and increase the volume of donations.

On the other hand Blue Cross FC (one of the most popular clubs in Mexico) was at the peak of attention, having recently won the Mexican League, and they were the perfect partners to join us ventures and create an idea that would help the Red Cross to regain attention by creating union across the Mexican football fans and so getting more donations to save the institution.

The idea was born with the purpose of demonstrate that union can make incredible things, so it was a huge opportunity on having a crossover between the most relevant football club at the moment (and also through the history of football in Mexico who also owns the tittle of having the biggest community of supporters) and the most iconic institution in Mexico, by creating a football team joining both institutions to play during the most viewed derby of the season. The result we aimed to get, was the attention of Mexicans football fans to be aware of Red cross cause and raised donations needed to save this year collection.

The strategy was based on 3 key elements:

First, we must established Red Cross in a disruptive territory in order to attract audiences, seeking to ensure a superior reach that would translate into donations.The second task was to ensure that the partner we were joining had the necessary relevance, in that sense there was no better club than Blue Cross, that has a fan base of more than 15M, enough to achieve the right noise to resonate and move attention towards what is important: Save the Red Cross. And the last task was to find the perfect moment: The most expected derby, broadcasted in a prime time moment on national TV, helping to take this idea to a new level. With this, we will raise awareness among fans of Cruz Azul in first instance, but gradually expand to all football fans in Mexico, demonstrating that there is strength in unity.

The first stage was introduce the Red Cross FC a week prior to the Mexican derby that took place the 31 of October of 2021, creating curiosity around what was about to happen, as a key component we produced a batch of 10k jerseys as well special edition merchandising, to make sure everybody could live the passion for the Mexican Red Cross FC, we started to spread this asset by sending the new jersey to multiple influencers during that week and they asked the people to start buying and donating to the Red Cross FC. On derby date, the stadium looked fully dressed in Red Cross jerseys, sending a powerful message to all these viewers and assistants, the rest was about time to spread the news, all kinds of media were commenting about the action, turning the attention to Red Cross, looking for the best way to help.

The jerseys and special edition merchandise sold out in the first week of sales, raising over 450K dollars, translated directly into the Red Cross donation bag.

After the event, media exposure was key. We achieved 8M impressions from 166 media partners, including the most important news media in Mexico, major sports media, Red Cross properties and paid medias. This ended up contributing to the visibility of the action, making more people aware of the Mexican Red Cross and the help they needed at that moment, and making additional donations increased, raising a total of 1.5M dollars attributable to this action.

Demonstrating that the sum of interest and action of all Mexicans always results in a positive collective impact in favor of the Red Cross and Mexico.