L'Equipe is the leading French sports newspaper. An institution, a reference anyone who loves
sports comes to read at some point. But just like all the press in France, its sales are struggling,
as people get used to getting information for free.
The continuous challenge is to re-engage lost readers. The client was also looking for a way to
sustain sales over a quiet period Christmas where sports activity is close to zero.
We knew advertising would not be enough, that we had to come up with another innovative way
to 'warm-up' the relationship. So we looked into the product itself.
It all started with a simple insight. Why do people buy L'Equipe? Because they love champions,
achievements, amazing destinies. They want great stories. So we decided to give them the best
sport stories they would ever read. 'L'Equipe of our dreams'.
A special edition of L'Equipe with the stories a sports fan has always dreamt to read. More than
he could experience in a lifetime. A paper packed with joy, with 'WOWs', with excitement.
Ronaldinho back in the Seleçao scores 2 goals in the final to win the world cup. Kobe Bryant
equals Jordan with a 6th NBA title. And a lot more.
'L'Equipe of our dreams' was given for free on 24th December together with the 'normal' paper,
all across the country. A beautiful Christmas present to create a very special relationship with
our readers.
All the articles were then used on the website where 'L'Equipe of our dreams' was downloadable
for free.
The week before, a press, poster and radio awareness campaign listed the worst
disappointments in French sport across ages, promising fans a revenge on Christmas day.
Even if pure fiction, our stories had to sound credible in order to maximize reading pleasure. So
we involved the editorial board of L'Equipe to have them write the articles. The best sports
journalists in France played the game, and turned their job around from writing reports and
analysis, to writing fiction.
That's how on 24th December, the front page of L'Equipe pictured Renaud Lavillenie who had
broken Serguei Bubka's mythical record at pole vault. This immediately caught attention in store
('how could I miss that??') & spread on twitter. Even other journalists thought for a minute they
had missed the big news.
Sales of the newspaper increased by 20% on the 24th december, usually the worst day of the
year for L'Equipe. We drove 600k more people on the website lequipe.fr.
#lequipedereve became Twitter trend on 24th december.
Sports fan massively commented and shared spontaneously their sport dreams on Twitter and
FB (more than 2000 « dreams »)
The main french radios and TVs mentioned it and it became the news : competitor's journalists
debated on the chances our stories had to become reality.
And eventually, Renaud Lavillenie did break the paul vault world record 2 months later, as
anticipated by L'Equipe. And exacerbated the media noise around « L'Equipe of our dreams ».
Most importantly, we re-engaged readers by making them dream. Making L'Equipe the brand
people turn to to share their love of sport.