2018 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

Football is nothing without a cheering crowd. Since TT could no longer have its logo on the national players’ shirts, we opted to engage the fans’ hearts instead by bringing Russia to them. We crafted a song as a celebration trophee for the qualification. We needed our music to be extremely catchy, so catchy that every Tunisian man and woman could easily pick it up. It needed to be a known tune, as known as the 150 years Russian old song: Kalinka. We kept the melody to immerse fans in the Russian atmosphere and rewrote the entire song with Tunisian lyrics making it an anthem they could celebrate the Worldcup qualifications to. That was the easiest way to get people to memorise our song and repeat it over and over again, and accordingly, make us stand out from others that were spending millions on the official sponsorship.

Creative Execution

Getting timing right was crucial for engagement. If we aired it before the game, there was the risk of losing and being accused of “jinxing” the qualification. If we aired it too late after the game, we would miss the heart of the celebrations. We made sure that “Russia Here We Come” would be the first content to air on all TV channels right after the game ends. Radio streams were ours as well with the participation of Radio hosts nationwide. Digital ads were also live at t-0 on all social sites as well as Youtube.

“Russia Here We Come” buzzed from the moment the game ended. Supporters celebrated on the Kalinka rhythm, making it the official Tunisian worldcup chant, and even made their own versions of the song. The clip scored a video-view-rate of 55%, totaling 5M views online which is the equivalent of 70% of the connected Tunisian population. It even topped the national Youtube trend list, considering that 87% of the total reach was organic. TT totaled 163k interactions on Social media. TV sets & radio streams took to playing RHWC as a jingle to all worldcup related contents.   Even though we lost the official sponsoring, we made Tunisie Telecom the most talked about brand during qualifications.

Football is nothing without a cheering crowd. So when TT lost its position as the national team sponsor, days before the ticket-game to Russia 2018, finding an alternate way to engage fans became the priority. Competitor Ooredoo might be the one to take the national team to the worldcup, but TT took the supporters there by creating a song that became the Tunisian fan anthem they celebrated to. We hijacked the famous Russian melody « Kalinka » and made it a chant about Tunisians coming to Russia, thus making TT the most talked about brand during the qualifications.

Everything from the tune to the lyrics were thought in detail to resonate with fans. The song was a journey in itself: starting with the strong beat of the original Kalinka and slavic-like pronounciation, and turning local with instruments such as the Tabla & Bendir drums take over as the lyrics turn into dialect. The video clip was a critical element to engage a maximum of people as well. The song was about fans, and fans were at the foreground on all frames. We made sure our cast was a diverse bunch. We obviously featured the typical football-fanatic young adult male, but made sure to also include seniors, kids, and most importantly women. Our anthem was thought to engage all personas within the sports-enthusiast segment and have maximum memorability with them all.