Title	NISSAN - THE TROPHY HIJACK
Brand	NISSAN
Product/Service	UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE
Category	B08. Use of Events
Entrant	NISSAN UNITED Paris, FRANCE
Idea Creation	NISSAN UNITED Paris, FRANCE
Media Placement	NISSAN UNITED Paris, FRANCE
Production	NISSAN UNITED Paris, FRANCE

Name	Company	Position
Eric Pierre	Nissan United	European Creative Director
Adam Mandelstam	Nissan United	Integrated Creative Director
Kiminori Suzuki	Nissan United	Art Director
Romain Duler	Nissan United	Copywriter

The Campaign

Nissan is a brand that stands for excitement, so, with all eyes on us, we hatched a plan to hijack our own precious cargo. We handed one fan the responsibility to transport the UCL Trophy from the fan zone to the stadium in time for the match that evening, all the while accompanied by footballing legend Edgar Davids. However, our fan unfortunately was too Excited to concentrate on where he was going and ended up not at the Principality Stadium where the final was due to be played that evening, but at Cardiff City stadium instead! Here, Nissan came to the rescue by staging a mad dash across the city in a variety of Nissan vehicles, ending with the successful delivery of the trophy to the correct stadium via a trip in the new 2017 Nissan X-Trail suspended below a flying helicopter!

Creative Execution

The stunt took place during a Facebook Live event in which we seamlessly integrated a pre-recorded film into the live stream showing the trophy being driven to the wrong stadium. Then, in a race against the clock, and using our range of supercars and 4x4s, we went on an epic journey across Cardiff to deliver the trophy to the correct stadium. A final shot saw the previously unreleased 2017 X-Trail, with the trophy inside, being airlifted by helicopter into the Principality Stadium. We literally launched Nissan’s new 4x4 model (but that’s a PR story for another case study).

This Facebook Live hijack is a world’s first (going against Facebook’s own policy) and coupled with our meticulous production process to ensure authenticity, fans were left guessing if it was staged or not.    The live event generated 80 million impressions, with 23 million views and 65k positive mentions. The leveraging of this content also contributed to Nissan being the 2nd most talked about brand at the Final, amongst the 8 main sponsors of the competition.

The UEFA champions league is the most watched annual sporting event in the world with the final attracting a minimum of 160 million viewers worldwide on average, even more than the Superbowl (141 million). We used Nissan's territory as the official sponsor of the UCL Final trophy journey to create a live stream activation with a twist. We hijacked our own trophy procession and broadcast the events to millions around the world via Facebook Live, enhancing the excitement in a truly unexpected part of the Final day experience.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

We increased the anticipation of the biggest annual event in world football by making fans' experience of the UCL final even more exciting. Targeting a core demographic of dedicated football fans, our activation was based on the idea that fans are too excited to concentrate on anything else other than the big game during a UCL matchday. This idea is most evident during the pinnacle of the entire competition - the final - so we created a live event on an epic scale to showcase the true level of fans' excitement around the UCL Final.