Arsenal players Carl Jenkinson, Laurent Koscielny and Shkodran Mustafi stepped up to take on the Citroën C1 Airscape Challenge in a new campaign activating the French car company’s long-running alliance with the London-based football club and aiming to promote a key vehicle feature.
The campaign revolves around a video that sees a new C1 Airscape, driven by stunt driver Paul Swift, become a two-wheeled target as the players aimed to kick balls through the vehicle’s open ‘Airscape’ roof.
Professional stunt driver Swift, who has been performing such stunning driving feats for 30 years, drove past the soccer stars on two wheels: a driving stunt known as ‘skiing’.
The competition mechanic is simple: the player who kicks most footballs on target wins.
Who came out on top?
Defender Jenkinson demonstrated his crossing accuracy and dominated the contest with five clean strikes through the open Airscape roof.
Arsenal vice-captain Koscielny finished second with two successful strikes, while Shkodran Mustafi finished on zero.
With the aim of generating plenty of entertainment-driven fan shares and to send the video viral, as well as posting the video on the auto brand and the club’s YouTube channels, it was also amplified on Twitter
#C1Airscape Challenge: @Arsenal’s @MustafiOfficial @carljenkinson & @6_LKOSCIELNY vs #C1. Who'll be the champion? https://t.co/1uhnn1P5xj pic.twitter.com/wGG0nX0R72
— Citroën UK (@CitroenUK) April 19, 2017
and Facebook.
The tactics for Citroën, the club’s Official Automotive Partner, was to demonstrate not just the exceptionally large electric sliding sunroof (800mm x 760mm) sunroof, but also to showcase its improved handling on all four wheels.
The campaign timing aims to reflect the changing weather, as the sunroof itself is ‘perfect when you want to enjoy the sunshine and warmer weather’.
Activative Comment:
This latest campaign follows in the footsteps of previous Citroen/Arsenal initiatives such as ‘Airbump Headis’ in April 2016 (which racked up 72,445 YouTube views).
This stunt saw Arsenal players Mikel Arteta, Héctor Bellerín, Calum Chambers and Francis Coquelin have had their first experience of Airbump Headis in a singles tournament held at the Arsenal training ground.
Headis, a hybrid of football and table tennis, is a popular game in Germany where Bundesliga teams, as well as the national team, have used it to hone their players’ aerial abilities.
This initiative in turn built on 2015’s ‘Airbump Footpool’ (645,000 YouTube Views).
While other Citroen/Arsenal activation includes an April Fool’s Day ‘Stadium Sunroof’ spoof campaign in 2016 (84,505 YouTube views).
With just 5,700 YouTube views for the new video in its first week, we’d suggest that the three players featuring in this month’s stunt don’t have anywhere near the same kind of pulling power of Ozil and Giroud who starred in 2015’s successful ‘Airbump Footpool.
Citroën initially partnered with Arsenal back in 2008 and then signed a new three-year partnership agreement with Arsenal Football Club to extend the relationship through to 2017.
The deal sees Citroën hold the title of the club’s Official Automotive Partner.
The car company has significant branding presence around Emirates Stadium, and runs an integrated partnership programme spanning marketing, digital, dealer and promotional activities.
Citroën also amplifies the association outside the UK – particularly in its home market of France.
Thus leveraging Arsenal’s long running French connections through manager Arsene Wenger and a number of French star players in recent years such as Patrick Vieira and Thierry Henry.
As part of the deal, Citroën also provides a number of vehicles for Arsenal coaches and staff and the company also plays a pivotal role in the transportation of equipment around the country, as well as supporting the Club’s community outreach programmes.
Links:
Citroen UK
https://www.facebook.com/CitroenUK
https://www.youtube.com/user/citroenactive
Arsenal
https://www.facebook.com/Arsenal
https://www.instagram.com/arsenal/
https://www.youtube.com/arsenal
https://plus.google.com/+arsenal/
http://cn.arsenal.com/newsdetail.php?id=32
http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archive/20151106/arsenal-on-snapchat
