Prime Video Scores A ‘Ligue 1 Soccer Symphony’ With Coaches As Conductors

Amazon’s Prime Video promoted its status as the official broadcaster of Ligue 1 Uber Eats – French football’s top tier – with a hype campaign that brought the ‘soccer is a symphony’ metaphor to life titled ‘Ligue 1 Uber Eats Symphonie’.

 

The broadcaster teamed up with French creative agency Marcel to elevate the status of the league by creating a content-led marketing campaign that offered a slice of music-led, football-linked entertainment to rival some of its shows.

 

Taking a coaches as conductors approach, the ‘Ligue 1 Uber Eats Symphony’ is built around an original composition based on the gestures and body language of the real managers of Ligue 1 teams.

 

It premiered on Prime Video on 26 February and was then rolled out across stadium screens across the league and on social media and runs through the season, while the track was also made available on Amazon Music.

 

 

The idea behind the project emerged after the agency team felt that a symphony is ‘one of the higher forms of music’ and when Marcel Creative Alexandre Girod watched bench cam videos of the coaches during games and was reminded of an orchestra conductor’s gestures.

 

“We wanted to create a symphony for football, by football,” said Girod. 

 

The Marcel team worked with Saycet, a French composer of electronic music and film soundtracks, to create the symphony via a process that reversed the typical way of conducting an orchestra: while a conductor usually translates a score into gestures, this project created music from the coaches’ movements after scoring. 

 

A single camera was placed in front of each coach to analyse and film their gestures. The most evocative and dramatic manager movements were then shown on a screen in Paris’ Espace Niemeyer auditorium in front of 70 musicians and choristers. The video gestures then acted as the conductor and set the tempo as the musicians created the soccer symphony with composer Saycet. 

 

Prime Video, which initially won the Ligue 1 broadcasting rights in 2021, challenged Marcel to ‘celebrate the quality and entertainment value of Ligue 1’ and to ‘elevate the stature’ of a league which some critically describe as Europe’s ‘farmers league’ due to a  perceived lack of quality and the total dominance of Paris Saint-Germain (PSG).

 

“We have stars and high quality of games,” explained Marcel Creative Director Jeremie Bottiau. “We wanted to elevate that while also creating something that was entertaining. It aims to appeal not only to soccer fans but also to skeptics and people who don’t usually watch sports.”

 

The campaign was created and briefed in by a Prime Video client team which included Marketing Director Helen Cowley, Senior Creative Director Xuan Pham, Marketing Lead – Live Sports Edouard Van Wynsberghe, Senior Brand Marketing Managers Gemma Mayat and Najib Messaoudi, Campaign Producers Sabrina Belaïba and Ben Walker, 
PR Manager – Sports Elsa Gueroult, Social Media Manager Antoine Gazel Jauregui, Media Manager Ian Brook and Head of Sports Bernard Chatillon.

 

The group working on the project at agency Marcel included Co-CEOs Pascal Nessim and Charles Georges-Picot, Chief Creative Officers Youri Guerassimov and Gaëtan du Peloux, Managing Director Benjamin Taïeb, Creative Director Jérémie Bottiau, Copywriter Alexandre Girod, Art Director Julien Vergne, Business Director Lucile Wissocq , Group Managers Quentin Seguret and Clara Bize, Account Manager Assistant Camille Dangoumau, Project Manager Antoine Zago-Meyer, Social Media Strategy Lead Charlotte Giraud-Charreyron, Community Manager Ivana Huc, Cadreur & Monteur Loick Tranier and Camera & Edit: Julien Hannedouche.

 

The production company was Allso with Executive Producer Franck Annese, Director Lucas Posson, Director of Photography Ludovic Zuili, Producer Louise Morand, Key Set Decorator Rudy Annese, Post-Production Director Romuald Carruesco.

 

Image post production was also handled by Allso and Firm, sound post production was by Durango Studio + Kouz, sound mix was by Romain Clisson, with Composer Saycet and Orchestrator Moritz.

 

 

Comment

 

Most often referred to as ‘the beautiful game’, it is sometimes the case that the game is compared to a symphony and this initiative plays intelligently and creatively on that.

 

Does this symphonic score genuinely capture the intensity and emotions of a big match? We will let you decide!

 

Perhaps surprisingly, sports marketing and symphonies aren’t quite as rare as one might imagine.

 

This initiative reminds us of sportswear brand Bjorn Borg’s 2019 ‘Smart Symphony’ optimized to improve workouts, plus 2019’s Finnish beer brand’s Sinebrychoff ‘Red Classics’ ice hockey game experience and Fitbit’s 2020 ‘Stress Symphony’.