Situation:Although times have changed, Football is still a male-dominated sport.

Two-thirds of women have, in fact, experienced discrimination (Source: BBC Sport, 2021).And when people think about the Champions League, they think of the cup with the big ears, the great players, but no women.

Brief:As a proud sponsor of both tournaments, Heineken is on a journey to become the most inclusive sponsor in football. Through the new creative platform #CheersToAllFans, the brand is supporting women in football as never before. A clear goal that allowed us to work proactively on a reactive piece that exploits the opportunities that the competitions offered to us.

Objectives:This creative piece is part of a series of concrete actions sharing the same objective: celebrate female footballers and fans, to endorse a more equal enjoyment of the game.In this case, by pushing fans and media to talk about the Women’s Champions League with a gender-neutral approach.

On December 9th, the Barcelona Men’s team got kicked out of the Champions League.

Few months later, the Barcelona Women’s team reached the Women’s Champions League semi-finals in front of a record-breaking audience.

We knew that this could happen and we seized the opportunity to promote equality in football with Heineken’s unique tone of voice.

The day after the match, a huge billboard in the very heart of Barcelona (La Rambla) congratulated the team for reaching the semi-finals. Without mentioning it was the women’s team. An innocent oversight that turned the headline into a statement for gender equality.

Most Barça fans were confused, at first. Until they better looked at the billboard and found the Women’s Champions League logo. Same things on social media (Instagram & Twitter) where a slider provided our cheer in the first visual and the logo of the competition in the second one.

When a Barcelona fan reads “Cheers to Barça for reaching the Champions League semi-finals” he immediately thinks WTF? Barcelona got kicked out months ago.

The truth is that no one considers the Women’s Champions League equally. Fans, sports journalists, and also Google: they are all biased. We were aware of this and we knew that by congratulating the team we would have generated spontaneous reactions, both offline and online. To achieve the best earned media coverage, we picked for our billboard the most strategic place in Barcelona (La Rambla) and worked proactively to launch the campaign exactly the day after the match. The news was still hot and sports media reprised the billboard as part of a wider coverage of the team achievement. Being topical, highly reactive and hyper relevant for the target were the pillars of our strategy.

Implementation:

A maxi billboard in the heart of La Rambla, Barcelona.

Various digital out of home formats in the center of Barcelona.

An Instagram and Twitter post with the same line to allow fans interaction.

Timeline:

From May 31st 2022, till Barça lawyers “kindly” asked us to remove everything a few days later.

Placement:

Outdoor: only in Barcelona

Twitter post on Heineken global profile (later removed)

Instagram post on Heineken global profile (later removed)

Scale:

One local billboard turned into news covered by many sports newspapers all over Europe.

The social posting helped to spread Heinken’s take on women’s football all over the internet, reaching all football fans, including some very important personalities like Thierry Henry and Alex Scott, both former footballers pledged to promote gender equality in football.

Reach:

The billboard was covered by several online magazines, including Marca, the most respected Spanish sports paper in sport. The total reach through earned media coverage was 78 million.

Impact:

> Many influencers in the sports world such as Thierry Henry and Alex Scott, shared the campaign and endorsed our point of view on a more gender neutral way of supporting football.

> MARCA, the most important sports newspaper in Spain, was moved by our campaign to cover the semi-finals of the Women’s Champions League without mentioning the gender of the competition.