Price comparison site Check24 teamed up with sportswear brand Puma for a list building initiative revolving around an unofficial German shirt giveaway promoted through an integrated campaign fronted by former striker Lukas Podolski that ambushed official national team kit supplier and fierce rival adidas to become the most widely worn kit during UEFA EURO 2024 and which has driven huge amounts of buzz, media coverage and app downloads for the brand.
Objective
The background to this campaign lies partly in the long-time and storied rivalry between the two rival German sportswear companies which were originally formed by two brothers Rudolf and Adolf Dassler.
In 1919 the siblings founded a shoe company called ‘Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik’ which was known as ‘Geda’. But in 1948 a mysterious family feud led to the brothers closing Geda – with Rudolf establishing what became known as Puma and Adolf starting the company that became adidas a year later.
As both businesses grew globally – signing up star athletes and sponsoring major clubs and events (adidas partnered with Muhammed Ali and the DFB, while Puma sponsored Pele and the Brazil national team) – the rivalry also grew. Some credit the competition between them as transforming the sports apparel category into a multi-billion pound industry. Eventually Adidas emerged as the dominant player and Puma as the challenger brand.
But earlier this year, after a 70-year partnership with the German Football Association (DFB), Adidas and the national team announced they will part ways as Nike will take over as the team’s official kit supplier from 2027 (after winning a winning war for the tie-up with an annual €100+m offer).
Puma teamed up with Check24 to continue the long-time rivalry and ambush Adidas role as the official supplier of UEFA EURO 2024 and the host German team through an unofficial kit supplier ambush: a disruptive marketing campaign with the aim of driving app downloads and gaining significant exposure and trust among a younger demographic who may not buy insurance immediately but might book flights or mobile contracts.
Activation
Based on an original tournament related, promotional idea by Check 24 Co-Founders Henrich Blasé and Eckhard Juls to drive app downloads, the price comparison website linked up with Puma to design and produce a free, unofficial German jersey for the Euros.
The ‘Puma x Check24 Germany Euro 2024 Shirt’ is similar to adidas’ official kit, but not so similar as to enable the official supplier and DFB to take legal action.
The design features the classic white and black German team colours, plus three black lines (echoing Adidas famous stripes), with a Check24 logo on the front in the colours of the German flag. Of course, the shirt doesn’t have any official DFB branding and instead, on the left chest, has an eagle (generated by AI) which is fairly similar to the German Bundesadler.
The shirt was not made available to buy individually, instead, the price comparison company offered a free jersey to anyone in Germany who downloaded the Check24 app.
Former German international Lukas Podolski turned brand ambassador fronted the promotional campaign – thus adding a dose of star power to the ‘free’ offer.
The spearhead, Podolski led spot ‘Deutschland-Trikots Für Ganz Deutschland! / Germany Jerseys For All Of Germany!’ dropped on 26 April urging viewers to ‘register now and secure your jersey: https://tippspiel.check24.de/ul/em24/.’
The hero spot was also backed by plenty of social media and street team created content as well as an avalanche of earned media and word of mouth.
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An additional strand to the ambush was an in-app competition: every match day there are numerous winners in the brand’s Euro tipping game.
“It brought me great joy and made me laugh. We hoped for some social media success, but nothing on this kind of magnitude – none of us anticipated it.”
Check24 Founder Henrich Blasé
Outcome
This campaign reportedly cost Check 24 €100m, but that now seems money well spent as, at its peak, 400,000 shirts were sent out daily and the two brands have now shifted an all-time record 5m shirts.
That’s more than the 3m official Adidas Germany home shirts sold during the 2014 World Cup and enough for the Check 24 and Puma to claim that is has become the most produced and worn football shirt in history.
The partnership stopped producing the Check 24 / Puma shirts mid tournament and now they are on sale on eBay for anything between €15 and €85.
In terms of ad content engagement metrics, the hero spot alone notched up an impressive 4m-plus views since it launched on 26 April.
The numbers alone surely make this Check24 and Puma campaign one of the smartest and most successful ambushes in recent times.
More than just a shrewd PR triumph, this campaign takes a leaf out of the Aldi and Lidl approach to copying existing products without actually breaking the law and is a fine example of a successful ambush campaign around a major sporting event.
It certainly generated plenty of headline-generating results and, while neither adidas nor the DFB (and probably even Nike) will be too pleased about it, this is how the contemporary ambush game is played.
On the ground in Germany you can’t avoid the shirts: they are literally everywhere around the EUROs – from bars and restaurants, to public transport and stadiums.
They also appear frequently across social media: indeed, TikTok is awash with videos of fans wearing them, while YouTube has thousands of videos showing which clothes fans have paired with them or the make-up that matches the shirt and the internet is full of memes about them too.
Did Check24 and Puma win the marketing EUROs before the knock-out stages had even begun?
This ambush, partner campaign runs in parallel with Puma’s own ‘See The Game Like We Do’ tournament iteration of its umbrella #ForeverFaster brand platform.