Brazil is widely known as the country of football, but there is a considerable gap between men's and women's football investments. Brands invest millions more in men's football than in women's, claiming that men's football offers them more visibility.

Even though gender representation is important to most brands, they fail to make this point valid in one of the most representative places of Brazilian society: football itself. As a longtime sponsor of the Brazilian Women's Football Team, Guaraná Antarctica had to do something about it.

The idea is pretty simple: Guaraná Antarctica is Brazil's second highest-selling soda. Millions of people lay their eyes on our cans every day: an audience as big as any TV show, Digital Influencer or YouTube Channel. So, we decided to build something entirely new: transforming our own product into a media placement and offering 35 million cans to any brand willing to invest money in women's football. The new logos were printed onto them, replacing ours.

The strategy was based on consumers' behaviour: we created videos and OOHs inviting brands to put their logo on our cans in exchange for investment in women's football. In this part of the campaign, we focused on selling the aspects that made our cans a media placement with massive potential in Brazil. With numbers of an audience as good as any TV show, social media influencer, or YouTube Channel.

Then, we reached out to football fans, gender representation groups, and even football fan associations to create a social movement to make our offer widely known to every brand. These communities played a huge part, tagging big brands in different industries beyond sports and calling them on the issue. Women's football fans widely used the hashtag #ApoieOFutFeminino (SupportWomenFootball) even outside the campaign context, making our strategy even more relevant.

Brazil is widely known as the country of football but there is a huge gap between investments in men's and women's football. Brands invest millions more in men's football than in Women's, always under the excuse that men's football offers more visibility to them.

Even though gender representation is important to most brands, they fail to make this point valid in one of the most representative places in Brazilian society: football itself. As a longtime sponsor of the Brazilian Women's Football Team, Guaraná Antarctica had to do something about it.

During the pandemic, stadiums were empty, and we had a hard time activating this sponsorship. Guaraná Antarctica is the second-highest selling soda in Brazil, so we presented our product as a media placement, offering 35 million cans to any brand willing to sponsor Women's Football by replacing our own logo with those who joined us to fight inequality. We started a campaign using our perspective as a sponsor to raise awareness around gender inequality in football, creating a meaningful way for football fans to interact with both our brand as well as others they admire. This way, we turned our sponsorship into a social movement that spoke volumes about inequality in Brazil.

We launched two videos: one aimed at brands and one aimed at football fans. Both detailed our offer, which was also brought to the streets by OOH spots strategically placed in front of buildings with major brands: banks, restaurants, corporate towers.

The invitation lasted two weeks: we targeted football fans, gender representation enthusiasts and football fan associations to ask other brands to join our effort.

After more than 100 brand subscriptions, we announced ten that would join us: Burger King, Lay's, Avon, Puma, ESPN, Hall's, BMG, Vivo, Gol and Consul, paying USD 100.000 each to sponsor Women's Football in Brazil. The announcement was made on our channels, as well as the other brands'. We sent kits with the cans to relevant influencers, journalists, and football fans to further spread the message.

After that, 35 million cans with the new logos reached supermarkets and stores.

We launched two videos: one aimed at brands and one aimed at soccer fans. Both detailed our offer, which was also brought to the streets by OOH spots strategically placed in front of buildings with major brands: banks, restaurants, corporate towers.

The invitation lasted for two weeks: we targeted soccer fans, gender representation enthusiasts and associations of soccer fans to ask other brands to join our effort.

After more than 100 brand subscriptions, we announced 10 that would join us: Burger King, Lay's, Avon, Puma, ESPN, Hall's, BMG, Vivo, Gol and Consul, paying USD 100.000 each to sponsor Women's Soccer in Brazil. The announcement was made in our channels, as well as in the other brand's. We sent kits with the cans to relevant influencers, journalists and soccer fans to make the message reach even further.

After that, 35 millions cans with the new logos reached supermarkets and stores.

The campaign was widely covered by Brazilian media, both through the invitation and the announcement of the chosen brands. The campaign hashtag #ApoieOFutFeminino (SupportWomenFootball) is still being used by women's football fans, having organically reached Twitter Trending Topics twice in the campaign. We had over 160M earned media impressions.

But this is the most important result: over 100 brands applied to the spot. Ten of them were chosen and donated $100.000 each to sponsor Women's Football. Overall, the campaign raised $2,5M for women's football academies. Some brands went beyond: Puma offered their factories to make football kits for free, BMG bank fully sponsored a women's football club, and ESPN decided to broadcast Women's National Finals for the first time.

In the end, we used our product to spread a powerful message in stores in every corner of Brazil, reaching places where traditional media is not present.