2019 Winners & Shortlists

Background.

The FIFA World Cup only comes around once every 4 years. And while every brand wants to join in on the fun, sponsorship rights cost a whole lot of $$$. That’s why we needed to figure out how we could be relevant, without blowing the bank.

Describe the creative idea.

Opportunity With only one team taking home the winning title, the World Cup can be a very painful time for fans. And the first place they go to express their pain and sadness is the internet – so that’s where we waited. Idea We created virtual pain killers – free gifts to soothe people’s pain after a bad game. Using social listening, we tracked the pain during key World Cup matches and offered disappointed fans some virtual relief. From spa vouchers to cinema tickets, fans received something to take their minds off the pain, courtesy of Panadol.

Describe the strategy.

Due to the minimal budget, our strategy was to focus on an affordable and live medium in which Panadol could react to fans in real time – which made Twitter the obvious choice. The plan was to use social listening in order to track the 'pain' during key matches and respond with a solution soon after. Tweets were narrowed down by location (Middle East), hashtags (related to the World Cup and team names), and age (21+).

Describe the execution.

The idea was implemented from the 26th of June right until the finals on the 15th of July, 2018. During this time, we used social listening to approach fans from losing teams in real time, and offer them a little virtual relief (online vouchers) to ease the 'pain'. A total of 30 fans were awarded from the UAE.

List the results.

We managed to turn a whole lot of pain into brand love. With zero media spend, the campaign achieved a whopping 59% engagement rate in just one week.