Ahead of the FIFA World Cup Final, Isreali e-commercie site Azrieli rolled out a campaign shining the spotlight on one of the 2018 tournament’s highest profile new features – the Video Assistant Referee (VAR).
Working with creative agency Leo Burnett Israel, the ‘Proudly Presents VAR Time’ campaign rolled out ahead of the World Cup Final to maximise spiking interest in soccer across the country.
One of the most talked about new features of Russia 2018, VAR became arguably the term of the tournament as FIFA introduced a new real-time tool to assist the on-field referees make the right call with the support of a supporting, qualified referee team watching video replay technology.
In using the system, the on-pitch refs made a hand gesture to the crowd and watching television audiencces signalling a VAR review was under way – thus bringing in a new universal action symbol for a television screen.
Taking this insight, the campaign aimed to drive fans to Azrieli’s new e-commerce website by using the tournament’s symbolic icon.
During the Final itself, on 15 July, each time the referee made the VAR signal, Azreili gave away a free large screen television to the first five viewers to text the brand.
The Leo Burnett Israel team that developed the campaign was led by CEO Adam Polachek, chief creative officer Ami Alush, chief account officer Idit Zukerman and chief strategy officer Shai Nissenboim.
It also included art director Olga Vorobieva, copywriter Elad Gaizler, agency producer Simi Ben-Zikri, coms director Eva Hasson, account supervisor Shiran Feldman, account manager Danielle Elmor and traffic manager Maya Varochik.
Comment:
If you are going to hijack the World Cup Final then it certainly makes pkenty of sense to focus a campaign around the tournament’s newest and most talked about fresh feature.
Surely this tactical approach was justified when the final itself featured a controversial penalty awarded via, yes, you guessed it, VAR.
Links:
Azrieli
https://www.facebook.com/azrielicom/
Leo Burnett Israel
https://www.facebook.com/LeoBurnettil/
