2020/2021 Winners & Shortlists

Summary

This case illustrates how Tunisie Telecom managed to be the n°1 brand associated with the Russia2018 world cup despite losing its team sponsorship after a 16 years contract. Sport sponsorship is a big brand appreciation driver for TT, who’s only recognized for impersonal attributes such as its superior infrastructure and wide distribution network. So when we risked being left behind during the world cup, we looked for a strategy to stay relevant despite losing the legitimacy of being an official sponsor. Our objective was to maintain and even improve-upon our brand appreciation score as well as remain among the 3 top brands associated with the world cup for Tunisians. We believed the world cup is an atmosphere, not a 90-minute game, and for a brand to leverage it successfully, it doesn’t need its logo on the players shirts, but rather a way to enrich the experience and allow people to have more fun. So instead of sponsoring the world cup team, we chose to engage fans instead by soundtrack to “world cup moments”. We crafted a song, a fan anthem, as a celebration trophee for the qualification. The lyrics were a shout of victory and claimed « Ya Roussia Jayin » (Russia Here We Come). We needed our music to be extremely catchy, so we hijacked the 150 year old Russian song: Kalinka. We kept the melody to immerse fans in the Russian atmosphere and rewrote the entire song with Tunisian lyrics making it a celebration and to announce that all Tunisians were on their way to Russia. We made sure that all TV channels aired it simultaneously right after the qualification. Radio stations played in and social media were an essential channel to the song viralisation as well. Bars, hotels and nightclubs added the song to their celebratory events. By the end of the night, all media channels were spontaneously playing “Russia Here We Come” confirming it as the fan anthem. The song hype was so high that fans and media confirmed it at the world cup anthem. We even reached Russia with our biggest fan delegation ever, whose cheers made them “Best Fans” according to FIFATV. “Ya Roussia Jayin” gathered more than 15M views, +400k interactions on social media and was the most shared video of the year on Facebook in Tunisia. On a brand-level, we gained +4 points in brand appreciation becoming the preferred Telco brand in Q1 2018 and we were the n°1 brand associated with the Russia 2018 worldcup for Tunisians.