Sprite is a top-three carbonated beverage in Mainland China, but the brand had been losing share to an aggressive, venture-backed newcomer who significantly outspends Sprite and invests heavily in Gen Z passion points.

This summer, Sprite launched a new brand proposition “Heat Happens, Stay Cool” via a witty campaign that precisely reached consumers during moments of mental and physical heat. Now, the brand needed to deepen its cultural relevance to win back the hearts of the young generation.

Furthermore, as we sought to reduce seasonality (Sprite’s sales are primarily during summer), we needed this activation to help us stay top of mind and drive trial. So, we aimed to create social talkability and give out at least 100,000 coupons.

What major cultural event gets more heated than the FIFA World Cup? And the most heat-filled moments in the games? The 225 yellow cards.

The idea: We turned every Yellow Card moment into a Sprite Moment. On MIGU – China’s biggest live streaming sports platform, whenever a yellow card was issued in a World Cup game, our live in-game triggers pushed alerts across multiple platforms, connected devices and digital outdoor in real time. Fans could instantly exchange the yellow cards for a Sprite online or offline to cool down.

Three-fourths of young football fans discuss a match on social media as it unfolds, so we mined social listening data around international tournaments in search of a breakthrough insight.

Weibo exploded whenever a team scored…but the word cloud was cluttered with branded hashtags. Digging deeper, we found a more interesting – and untapped – buzz pattern around yellow cards. While the average real-time conversation spike was only ¼ that of goals, each burst lasted 37% longer on average as fans turned to Weibo to vent, analyze and argue over yellow cards for hours.

We crunched the FIFA stats, an average 4 yellow cards per match (249 total) in the past four World Cups – and we knew we had it: a targeted audience insight that was a frequent, predictable data signal that fans were about to get heated. And when there’s heat, there’s an opportunity for Sprite to cool things down.

We activated a connected ecosystem of paid and owned touchpoints to communicate our “Yellow Card Creates Heat, Sprite Cools Down Heat” message to football fans and drive them to snag one of a thousand coupons for free Sprite released in the minute after each yellow card.

Our activation was unmissable during the broadcast thanks to in-app, pre-game, and half-time advertising and remarks by studio hosts. Furthermore, our corner ads appeared exactly at the yellow card moment replay – a real-time media first for a Chinese live broadcast. And as fans checked Weibo during the games, we not only surrounded relevant trending topics with ads driving to our digital hub, but also joined the conversation with real-time yellow card commentary like “maybe he pulled on his jersey because he wanted to swap.” Amplification via influencers and even innovative digital OOH inspired more fans to join our discussion and claim their free

· We distributed 225,000 coupons as referees doled out 225 yellow cards over the 64-match tournament; 54% of coupons were redeemed for a free Sprite (20 points higher than previous campaigns)

· Our digital hub received 4.6 million visits (837,000 unique visitors; 5.5 average visits) during the World Cup and we recruited 718,000 new members to our CRM platform

· Our 66 topical Weibo posters published within 10 minutes of big yellow card moments received 540 million impressions and 3.6 million engagements, and sparked over 1 million discussions