Title	IT’S ALMOST THE SAME THING. BUT IT’S NOT.
Brand	SPORTING CLUBE DE PORTUGAL
Product/Service	OFFICIAL EQUIPMENT
Category	F02. Low Budget Campaign
Entrant	CARMEN Lisbon, PORTUGAL
Idea Creation	CARMEN Lisbon, PORTUGAL
PR	YOUNGNETWORK Lisbon, PORTUGAL
Production	GARAGE Lisbon, PORTUGAL

The Campaign

“It is a perfect imitation, it’s almost the same thing” is the most used saying by counterfeiting sellers. After the purchase, the fans immediately know that, after all, it was almost the same thing, but in reality it’s not. In order to get the message to reach all fans, in the first half part of the game, all of the Sporting players entered the field with their names misspelled in the shirts. Quickly the error was noticed by the fans that showed their opinions of what was happening. The revelation came at half time. Through a press release,we explained to the media the “error”. At the same time, at the stadium, the fans watched in the screens the explanation of why the names were misspelled.

The Brief

We didn't spend any money. We had no costs with the production of the t-shirts, because it was part of the contract with the supplier. Also, we had no costs with the media, because the campaign was shared by users in social networks at no cost.

Creative Execution

During the game of March 19th , 2016, between Sporting and Arouca, we’ve made a simple modification in the name of the players written in the back of their shirts. This modification, despite being small, to the most aware fans, it was noticeable and it got easily viral.

Results

• It was the topic of the day in national media, but also in international media. • The misspelled name GUTERRES was the second trend topic in Twitter. • Over 4 million people were impacted by the action and the counterfeiting topic. • A media return of 800.000€ . • The official shirts of the season got out of stock.

Because we use the most relevant moment to the fans, which is watching the game live, and we simultaneously talk about the importance of not buying a counterfeiting shirt, proving that a small detail can be noticeable by a lot of people.

We showed the message directly to the fans, live on a game of the Sporting team, reaching the fans that were there at the stadium and also those watching from home. It was a game from the national league, broadcasted in all country. And, as expected, people used the social networks to manifest what they saw as “an error”, proving that they were impacted in the way we planed.