To overcome its persistent cold weather sales slump, Sprite China had just launched a new brand proposition “Heat Happens, Stay Cool” reframing itself as the year-round antidote to moments of physical and mental heat. So, as winter approached, we needed a cut-through, culturally relevant way to ensure Sprite’s new message stayed top of mind and drove sales.

What major cultural event gets more heated than the FIFA World Cup? The shared agony and ecstasy of high-stakes football and the hundreds of millions of Chinese Gen Z – Sprite’s growth audience - expected to tune in made the 2022 Qatar World Cup a likely shot on goal. But without any formal sponsorship deal, Sprite was the marketing underdog.

In a World Cup first, Sprite hijacked the yellow cards via a real-time responsive campaign that cooled down heated fans with free Sprite whenever a yellow card was handed out during the tournament.

Our strategy had four pillars of success:

RESOURCEFUL TARGETING: We got in our targets’ minds Emi Martinez-style by mining social behavior data for a strong and specific signal that we could activate to precisely engage our audience in moments of ‘heat’ – the yellow cards

RIGHT TOUCHPOINTS: We played offense vs. bigger-budget brands by strategically selecting platforms and formats that intercepted Chinese Gen Z’s second screen viewing behaviors

RELEVANT MESSAGES: Like VAR, we analyzed past World Cup footage to prep 300+ lines of topical copy to respond to different yellow card scenarios

REAL-TIME EXECUTION: ‘Small margins decide big games’, so we drilled to eliminate internal bottlenecks, leveraged AI and pushed partners to make media placements more responsive

Throughout the tournament on Migu, China’s biggest live sports platform, whenever a yellow card was issued, our AI image recognition-powered in-game triggers simultaneously pushed alerts across digital platforms and devices in real-time. Fans could instantly exchange our yellow cards for an ice-cold Sprite online or offline to cool down.

Sprite was unmissable during the broadcast: our corner ads appeared exactly at the yellow card moment – a real-time media FIRST for a Chinese live broadcast – along with in-app, pre-game, and half-time advertising as well as commentary on the activation by studio hosts. And as fans checked Weibo during the games, we joined the social conversation with our witty real-time yellow card commentary like “he’s pulling more people over than a traffic cop” and “big match doesn’t mean cage match.” Amplification via influencers and innovative digital outdoor inspired more fans to join the discussion and claim their free Sprite.

As Argentina celebrated their World Cup victory, we cheered Sprite’s marketing win! We delivered 7.8 billion total impressions – and were 5X more effective than the official sponsors ($0.41 CPM vs. $1.96 CPM). Fans loved our real-time relevant activation as they snatched up all 225,000 free Sprites and engaged 3.6 million times on social media. Sprite’s brand awareness and relevance to young consumers soared vs. pre-campaign: +2 points in spontaneous awareness, +5 points in “is a youthful brand”, and +5 points in “makes the moment special.” Crucially, we grew Sprite’s market share of the highly competitive flavored sparkling category in the fourth quarter, reversing the negative trend of previous years.