In April the D&AD Shift class was invited to the adidas Homeground in Herzogenaurach to take on the challenge of creating a Marketing Campaign in under 24 hours.
Our Challenge was nothing less but to recreate 2006's “Sommermärchen” for the upcomin EURO 2024
My Role Research, Facilitation, Concept
Length 24 hours in April 2023
Sector #Marketing #Sports #Social Impact
Team Lael, Niko, Samuel, Laura & me
Tools Miro, Canva, Paper
The Problem: In today's world football as we know it isn't as accessible anymore and doesn't make for great content on social media either.
A lot has changed since 2006. Today we have costly streaming & sport club subscriptions that aren't inclusive due to the involved costs.
Also, Germany's football basis was eroded as many clubs needed to close down as a result of the recent crisis.
On top of that Gen Z isn't known for being crazy about traditional football - but rather short clips on social media.
The Opportunity: We needed to find a middle ground to re-ignite the passion for football again.
In essence, we found the perfect opportunity space in street sports. Future Olympics will feature sports like breakdancing or skating. And what is the pendant to that in football?
Right! It's street football! Here we aim to create a space for generational exchange and social impact bringing young & old to #KickItTogether.
The Solution: To create a Sommermärchen in 2024 we proposed to..
The evening started with the briefing after which we had an hour to discuss and interview our key-stakeholder to clarify any critical questions like "what is the budget for the campaign?" that would inform the direction of the campaign.
The day came to an end in the restaurant of the adidas Homeground but as facilitator the evening wasn't over for me, just yet..
I broke down the brief and based on our initial conversation and the stakeholder interview, I created Research Questions for our group
I created these with the passion point model in mind and the constraints of our challenge like the overarching goal and key objectives for our client.
Research Questions covering the Passion Point model
We started by breaking down the brief again to collect every team member's view and discussed the approach we would follow for the next hours. I presented the Research Questions along with an comprehensive overview of the brief and gave the group ~45 minutes to collect what they could find.
Afterwards we presented our findings to one another, while I took notes.
Subsequently we synthesized our findings and aligned on one insight for each question.
In my role I was also responsible to timebox to keep the group on track as the conversation often drifted off to ideas, which we would come back to later on.
Our combined insights lead to our idea #KickItTogether
Next up I suggested to use Crazy 8, a quick method to iterate on our idea following the principle of "Alone, Together". However, the time pressure was real and we decided to skip this step and talk it out instead.
Our research gave us a solid informed direction already and we were more or less aligned as everyone was involved in the research.
From here on out we just needed to puzzle it together into one concept. Everybody on the team was 110% invested to make it happen.
We finished the pitch-deck just about 1 hour before the deadline. Just enough time for a few dry runs as at the pitch we only had 10 minutes (incl. questions) to sell the campaign to the client. Everything needed to be perfect.
Each of us presented one part of our campaign from Problem, Insight, Idea to Execution and answered the questions of our client's stakeholders with confidence.
Even though we had the most simplistic presentation, the jury loved that we touched on every aspect of the brief and it made me very proud when one of the jury members quoted..
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” - Abraham Lincoln
They noted we've actually been the team they were most worried about as we took most of our time researching and fleshing out the concept. However, in the end this strong foundation made the difference for them.
My proud team right after winning the pitch from left to right:
Lael, Niko, Samuel, Laura & myself
The weekend at adidas only had winners. Each team of our class poured their heart into truly outstanding concepts showcasing their talent and skills.