As China’s World Cup fever drove other brands to clamor for the biggest sponsorship deals, Sprite bought the tournament’s smallest piece of media: the yellow card.

We made Sprite’s “Heat Happens, Stay Cool” proposition ultra-relevant and ultra-actionable to Chinese football fans as we pushed alerts in the live broadcast, on social media, and on outdoor screens precisely at the mental heat-inducing yellow cards and triggered fans to stay cool with a free Sprite. By making each media touchpoint real-time and responsive, we turned every yellow card moment into a Sprite moment – all 225 of them.

To overcome its persistent cold weather sales slump, Sprite 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.

Every brand wanted in on big celebrations – the goals and wins whose social word clouds were cluttered with branded hashtags. Digging deeper into social listening data and World Cup statistics, we found a differentiated and more frequent (1.6x vs. goals in the past four World Cups) opportunity:

When a referee shows a yellow card to a player, it’s not just the player in question who gets upset. In bars and living rooms across China, young football fans take to Weibo to vent their frustration over the decision, which gave us a regular, predictable-and untapped-signal that fans were about to get heated. And when there’s heat, there’s an opportunity for Sprite to cool things down.

In a World Cup first, we hijacked the hottest moments – the 225 yellow cards – to cool down heated fans with free Sprite whenever a yellow card was handed out during the tournament.

We engaged fans with witty social commentary-style messages precisely during yellow cards and triggered them to cool down with a free Sprite – adding to, rather than interrupting, their viewing experience.

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.

While Chinese enterprises led the sponsorship race paying $1.4 billion total for guaranteed massive exposure during World Cup matches, Sprite used the smallest piece of media – the yellow card – to have a BIG impact without paying a single sponsorship dollar.

We matched young Chinese football fans’ second screen viewing behaviors to take over not only the highest-watched online broadcast, but also social media and even digital outdoor screens precisely during the yellow cards. By making each media touchpoint real-time and responsive, we turned every yellow card moment into a Sprite moment – all 225 of them.

China has a highly restrictive advertising environment with myriad rules and regulations. Given the risks of failing censorship board review, being heavily fined, or facing public backlash, all ad materials needed advance approval from the internal public affairs and legal departments. For similar reasons, media platforms didn’t offer real-time ad placements during live broadcasts. So, when we first had the idea of a yellow card hijack, we nearly censored ourselves.

Bringing this never-been-done-before campaign to life required a hefty dose of ingenuity: we predicted yellow card scenarios based on our analysis of past World Cups to prep 300+ lines of topical copy that could be approved in advance, and we negotiated at length with media partners to make media placements real-time responsive enabled by AI image recognition technology.

Chinese football fans were thrilled as evidenced by the results and social comments like “Sprite knows how to play the beautiful game.”