Cris-Sal’s Superstitious ‘Unlucky Sponsor’ Salt Campaign Cheers For Ecuador’s World Cup Qualifying Rivals

In Ecuador (as is the case across Latin America), salt has bad luck connotations, so when Cris-Sal was prevented from sponsoring the national football team because of the traditional superstitions around its product, the brand turned to cheering for the country’s rivals to send the bad luck the way of the team’s opponents during FIFA 2022 Men’s World Cup qualifying.

In South American, salt itself or saying that something or someone is salty is often seen as bad luck. So, based on this insight, to show its support for Ecuador’s FIFA 2022 Men’s World Cup qualifying campaign, Cris-Sal worked with agency Paradais DDB (Guayaquil) on a campaign called ‘The Unlucky Sponsor’ which saw the brand wish luck to Ecuador’s opponents as the country sought to qualify for Qatar 2022.

These messages of ‘support’ ran primarily across OOH and DOOH billboards (supported by PR) which were positioned inside and in the area outside the stadiums across South America where Ecuador’s qualifying games were played. Each execution featured a Cris-Sal shaker dusting messages wishing the opposing team good luck: for example, for its game against Brazil the poster copy read ‘Um pouco de sal para a seleção Brasilera / A little salt for the Brazilian side’,

The campaign ran through the 10-nation South America qualifying stages from October 2020 through to March 2022 when Ecuador sealed its spot in the tournament after big wins against rivals such as Chile, Colombia and Uruguay (some of whom seemingly suffered from an unusually unlucky number of key injuries, red card and dubious penalties).

Comment

So good luck to Ecuador! Or should that be bad luck?