Orange is the leading telecommunications provider in France and a historical sponsor of French football. While Orange equally supports both the men's and women's national football teams, women's football still faces significant gender bias among fans. To spark a global conversation and create earned media, Orange hacked the most viral and popular type of football content online and tricked the football. The video became the most popular, watched and shared content with PR reach extending to more than 91 countries.

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.

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.

To orchestrate the virality of the campaign, we worked on the most engaging platform for football fans: X. Since our intent was to expose them to women’s actions with the filter of their gender bias turned off, we decided to go all the way and prank them. 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 went viral in only days, and successfully fueled debate the biases women’s football suffers from.

> +2B impressions

> +200M organic views

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

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

> A worldwide organic reach of the video estimated to represent 800K$ in paid media.

> Strong attribution to Orange, both in media coverage and in social media reactions: 92,5% of media coverage pieces mentioned Orange. The brand was even mentioned at a press conference when a journalist asked the players their thought about the video.

A study commissioned by Orange on French people over 16 y/o, non rejector of football confirms that the video became an empowering tool for women and a powerful educational tool for all:

• plan to watch woman football: +17pts vs before watching the film

• raises awareness of the sexist stereotypes that exist in society : 90%

• inspires young girls to consider careers in which women seem less present: 80%

• broadcasting it in schools is a good idea: 88%

(FreeThinking 02/2024)