Last summer, the French women's football team played in its 5th World Cup, in a unique context. Up until a few weeks before the competition, no media organization had stepped in to buy the broadcasting rights for the event.

In a country where football is a passion, women's football is left out of the fervor. One of the reasons is prejudice about its lack of technical skills. Many fans have a strong opinion about it, without ever having watched a match, or having looked at biased compilations ("The worst of women's football", "100% fails women's football”…)

This is why the WWC was a key moment for Orange, a committed partner of football for 24 years, to go beyond its usual support for the French Women's Team, via a CSR brief whose main objective was to tackle the prejudices that women's football suffers from.

To challenge football fans' preconceived notions, we used their love of beautiful technical moves to create a Trojan horse. We created a never-before-seen compilation of actions from players of the French men's team. For 1 minute, we see the beautiful play of Mbappé, Giroud, Griezmann, etc..., in a sequence that borrows from the codes of sports best-of videos.

The reveal then unveils the ruse: the video was in reality a compilation of... women’s technical moves! Thanks to VFX effects, the appearance of the French woman's team has been faked in the 1st part of the compilation, to serve a strong message. These skillful women's actions, without VFX, are replayed in the 2nd part of the video, so that the audience can admire them, stripped away from the filter of their gender stereotypes.

Our primary target was football fans, but more precisely:

• Men are the audience: In February 2023, a study for the French Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication found that men count for 66% of sport viewership (63% for women’s sport)

• Sexism is the problem:

A study from Durham University in 2022 reveal that over two-thirds of male supporters display hostile or sexist attitudes towards women's football.

A study led by the Zurich University Sociology Department. By exposing a group of 613 participants to blurred goals, the research reached the conclusion that perceived quality of actions is heavily filtered through gender stereotypes, with women being pre-judged as less technical.

Those pieces of research combined convinced us that we needed a trojan horse and use men to fight preconceived opinion men can have about women football.

The campaign was first launched only on X, which is the key platform for football conversations. We capitalized on the account of an influencer with medium visibility but very high engagement. This X account first posted only the first part of the video (= the women's technical moves 'disguised' as men's players), before revealing the trickery a few hours later to its community by posting it in full. Engagement surrounding these 2 tweets was very high, kick-starting mainstream media PR in France: within a day of the tweet, 8 mainstream media outlets were picking up on the video. This meticulous orchestration allowed the compilation to go viral, first in Europe, then around the world.

The video successfully fueled the debate:

+2B impressions

+200M organic views

Estimated organic reach: 800K$

+450 cross-media PR coverage in 91 countries: online articles, TV and radio, podcasts.

Influential relays from all sectors: the French Minister for Sport Amélie Oudéa Castera, Alexis Ohanian (Reddit CEO), Daniel Storey (football365) Gary Lineker, Dan Povenmire. Football players, both men and woman: Delphine Cascarino, Blaise Matuidi, Eugénie Le Sommer, Matteo Guendouzi, Amandine Henry, Oussmane Dembélé, Antoine Griezmann...

> Attribution: 92,5% of media coverage pieces mentioned Orange.

It has become an empowering tool for women and a powerful educational tool for all:

+17pts plan to watch woman’s football vs before watching the film

90% agree that the film raises awareness of the sexist stereotypes that exist in society.

88% agree that broadcasting it in schools is a good idea.

(FreeThinking 02/2024 / French people 16 y/o+, non rejectors of football)