June saw Visa roll out a statistics-led integrated campaign called ‘Behind Every Number’ running primarily across Australia and New Zealand celebrating its 20-year support of women in sports and fifth consecutive sponsorship of FIFA’s 2023 Women’s World Cup.
Developed in harness with creative agency Saatchi & Saatchi and Starcom, the global digital payments partner’s through-the-line tournament activation focuses on the stories behind player shirt numbers. The creative idea explores various challenges a player might face as signified by the number on her jersey: led by the trials and tribulations of a fictional player who wears number 5 for Australia or New Zealand.
The creative spans TV (including a broadcast and digital sponsorship with the Seven Network and Optus Sport), online video, social and OOH and rolled out more than a month ahead of the 20 July kick off.
The anchor commercial revolves around a fictional player and her invented story and this is backed by supporting digital and OOH executions celebrating real stories of Team Visa players: including Ellie Carpenter (Lyon and Australia Matildas) and Claudia Bunge (Melbourne Victory and New Zealand Ferns).
The hero spot tells the story of a fictional female soccer star’s life: from being a five-year-old fan to wearing the number five jersey for her country. ‘Behind Every Number, There Is A Story’ dropped on 5 June and comes with the copy line ‘A World Cup jersey isn’t worn without a story behind it. Visa, worldwide partner of the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023. Proudly supporting women in sport for 20 years.’
The full length, 30-second film is supported by 15- and 6-second cut downs and social media content including a ticket giveaway.
The films and social posts are backed by digital and OOH executions celebrating the stories behind the real pair of Team Visa footballers.
An additional activation strand promoted the Visa ‘Play On’ programme: an initiative aimed at helping young girls in Australia and New Zealand stay in sport. Featuring Team Visa athlete ambassadors (including footballers Ellie Carpenter and Claudia Bunge, as well as Olympic shot putter Dame Valerie Adams) alongside influencers from a range of spheres (including art and gaming), it was inspired by research which found that in Australia 57% of girls aged 13-to-17 drop out of sport compared with just 39% of Australian boys.
To combat this drop out trend, a ‘Year 13’ Visa PlayOn platform, programme and campaign seeks to makes sport more accessible while empowering and encouraging girls to stay in sport through championing role models, reinforcing body confidence and highlighting the benefits of playing sport.
“Visa is a data-driven company that analyses numbers for meaningful insights,” commented Visa Head Of Marketing For Australia, New Zealand And South Pacific Natalie Lockwood. “Beyond the 260 billion transactions, we seek to celebrate the individual stories of the people we serve. Be it a transaction we enable, game statistics or a jersey number, there’s a personal story. In particular, we want to actively celebrate the stories and power of the women who are inspired to play this beautiful game, from parks to stadiums.”
Saatchi & Saatchi Creative Director Piero Ruzzene added: “We’ve chosen to tell a single woman’s story in film, which not only seeks to show how a moment with Visa can inspire great possibility, but further proves that a person can never know where a seemingly routine transaction can lead them.”
According to Client Service Director Jacqui Purcell, the media strategy – handled by Publicis Groupe’s Starcom – focused on “unmissable media formats to make inspiring connections with Visa’s long association with the FIFA Women’s World Cup”.
The campaign was crested for client Visa by a team at creative agency Saatchi & Saatchi Australia, with production company Collider, music and sound by Sonar and media handled by Starcom AU and Starcom NZ.
The campaign was created according to a brief developed by a team at client Visa which included SVP & Chief Marketing Officer (Asia Pacific) Danielle Jin, Head of Marketing (Australia, New Zealand and South Pacific) Natalie Lockwood, Head of Consumer Brand Marketing (Asia Pacific) Karen McGregor, Senior Director of Marketing (Asia Pacific) Alex Khoury, Senior Director Consumer Marketing and Partnerships Simone Moss, Director of Consumer Marketing and Partnerships Sam Smedley and Senior Manager of Asia Pacific Campaigns & Creatives Aaron Yang.
The group that worked on the project at creative agency Saatchi & Saatchi Australia was led by Creative Director Piero Ruzzene, Art Director Mary Graham, Copywriter Phoebe Joiner, Creative Mac Wright, Head of Strategy Joe Heath, Group Business Director Claire Thompson, Senior Business Manager Emma McLellan, Business Executive Dariusz Kuczynski, Head of Broadcast Production Michael Demosthenous, Senior Broadcast Producer Tamara Kennon, Print Producer Holly De Roy and Head of Operations Greer MacPherson.
The team at production company Collider included Director Beatrice Pegard, Executive Producer Rachael Ford-Davies, Executive Producer/Producer Olivia Hantken, DOP Zoe White, Production Designer Sam Lukins, Colourist Billy Wychgel and Editor Adam Wills, plus Compositor Stuart Bedford.
Music and sound was by Level Two Darktown, Strutter and a team at Sonar Music led by Engineer Timothy Bridge and Producers Haylee Poppi and Louis Moore.
Media was handled by a unit at Media Starcom which included AU Client Services Director Jacqui Purcell, Head of Investment Rebecca Ho, Performance Director Angeline Hartono, Account Manager Mitchell Brown, Investment Manager Bailey Reed,
Account Executive James MacGregor, Starcom NZ Group Business Director Paul Hamilton and Business Manager Beena Dhanji.
Comment
Commitment and perseverance are valid topics for football marketing, but they are becoming overused approaches to women’s football marketing as its rapid growth takes it into the mainstream entertainment space.
Overall, we can’t help but feel that this campaign lacks originality and that the storytelling in the lead film is fairly vanilla. Why use an impersonal, fictional player’s story when you have authentic, player ambassador stories to work with?
We’re not convinced this work will win any creative tournaments, but to its credit it launched during a period when the lack of PR and brand advertising around the tournament was being criticised in several major media markets.
Perhaps the most admirable and powerful number-related story associated with this campaign is the fact that this is Visa’s 20th year supporting women in sports and its fifth consecutive sponsorship of the FIFA Women’s World Cup.
Indeed, this work is the culmination of an activation programme that first began back in 2021.
Visa, which has been FIFA’s Official Payment Technology Partner since 2007, is a long-time global soccer supporters of both men’s and women’s football and its strategy is built around offering fan/customer experiences that bring people closer to the action.
As well as providing payments innovations and options at official FIFA venues, Visa uses its football and sports partnerships to ‘bring to life its commitment to uplift lives through the power of sport’ through programs such as ‘Financial Football’ (a video game that combines entertainment and education in an action-packed virtual football tournament).
The 2023 tournament activation programme followed on from previous Visa World Cup work including Qatar 2022s ‘For Fans Everywhere’ and ‘Masters Of Movement’, , its 2022 UEFA Women’s Euros ‘When More Of Us Play, All Of Us Win‘, plus its Russia 2018 ‘Ultimate FIFA World Cup‘ work.
Leave a comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.