Just Eat Takeaway.com (JET) is a global sponsor of UEFA and its premier men’s competition, the UEFA Champions League (UCL). Just Eat Ireland (JEI) wanted to leverage the sponsorship to build a strong connection with their target audience of 18-34 football fans within their market.

There was one challenge though, an Irish team has never qualified or played in the UCL. While the tournament is still massively popular with football fans in Ireland and across the world, there’s a disconnect with these fans who have never watched or supported their local Irish club team in the competition.

To combat this, Just Eat Ireland wanted to identify a moment of UCL history that has brought joy to Irish football fans that could fulfil the following objectives:

- Build brand relevance & association in football

- Increase Top of Mind Awareness in football

Just Eat Ireland created a seven-minute mockumentary that turned a fondly remembered yet ultimately inconsequential incident in Irish sport into the most revered moment in football history.

JEI dreamed up an alternative reality where the usually modest John O'Shea was transformed into a global icon after his Nutmeg of Louis Figo.

Comedically hitting all the cliches of superstardom, John experiences a rollercoaster of fame, ego, wealth, exotic pets, Hollywood passion projects, a fall from grace and eventual fictional redemption.

Real talking heads from Irish media and sports humorously blur fact and fiction. The idea is a satirical yet loving parody of bombastic sports documentaries such as Netflix's The Last Dance.

Creatively, our insight was to subvert the usual heavy-toned, overly referential manner in which brands approach sports nostalgia. Delivered in a fun, tongue-in-cheek tone, the idea directly amplified Just Eats message to deliver joy to food lovers.

Just Eat’s sponsorship audience is males aged 18 - 34. Data from Teneo Sports showed that 80% of this audience is interested in Football.

Our research shows that this audience consumes social media while watching sports more than any other demographic, 63% vs the average of all adults (41%).

Platforms, WhatsApp 63%, Instagram 63%, Twitter 58%, Facebook 58% & YouTube 32% are all higher than all other demographics. They’re also the highest audience for watching a sporting documentary at 53%. Principally, humorous sports content is some of the most consistently shared and engaged by this audiance who value cult stars, obscure stats and nostalgia moments.

These insights played a significant role in our approach to developing our campaign.

We developed an integrated approach to drive brand relevance amongst our audience.

- Leverage nostalgia (The Nutmeg)

- Partner with a cult hero (John O’Shea)

- Create funny, highly sharable sports content.

Just Eat Ireland created a seven-minute mockumentary that turned a fondly remembered yet ultimately inconsequential incident in Irish sport into the most revered moment in football history.

JEI dreamed up an alternative reality where the usually modest John O'Shea was transformed into a global icon after his Nutmeg of Louis Figo.

Comedically hitting all the cliches of superstardom, John experiences a rollercoaster of fame, ego, wealth, exotic pets, Hollywood passion projects, a fall from grace and eventual fictional redemption.

Real talking heads from Irish media and sports humorously blur fact and fiction. The idea is a satirical yet loving parody of bombastic sports documentaries such as Netflix's The Last Dance.

Creatively, our insight was to subvert the usual heavy-toned, overly referential manner in which brands approach sports nostalgia. Delivered in a fun, tongue-in-cheek tone, the idea directly amplified Just Eats message to deliver joy to food lovers.

This campaign exceeded all expectations for JEI.

- Overall sponsorship awareness in Ireland increased from 22% to 27%, surpassing the 3% objective

- Increased top-of-mind awareness by 5%, from 53% to 58%, surpassing the 3% objective.

- Spontaneous brand awareness amongst footballing fans increased by 9%, from 72% to 81% - surpassing 3% objective.

- 70% of footballing fans said the content made them feel more positive about Just Eat

The Film achieved:

- 9m views across all channels, far surpassing the brand's 2m views objective

-37,000 social engagements exceeding the 15,000 social engagements objective

- 49% YouTube View Through Rate exceeded the objective of 20% view-through rate.

- 97% positive sentiment exceeding 90% positive sentiment objective.

The Nutmeg became a viral hit, spawning its own Reddit page. The Film was even discussed for over five minutes live on OTB, one of Ireland's most popular national talk radio shows.