Title	#INYOURNAME
Brand	ADIDAS AND THE SWEDISH FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION (SVFF)
Product/Service	SWEDISH WOMEN NATIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM JERSEY
Category	B11. Sponsorship & Partnership
Entrant	EDELMAN DEPORTIVO Stockholm, SWEDEN
Idea Creation	EDELMAN DEPORTIVO Stockholm, SWEDEN
PR	EDELMAN DEPORTIVO Stockholm, SWEDEN
Production	EDELMAN DEPORTIVO Stockholm, SWEDEN

Name	Company	Position
Sandra Essesjö	adidas
Ninos Icho	adidas
Anders Goding	adidas
Daniel Eiderbäck	adidas
Hanna Leback	SvFF
Niklas Bodell	SvFF

The Campaign

#InYourName. To inspire the younger generation, the Swedish national team did something never done before in the history of national football. They swapped their names on the national team jersey’s for motivational tweets, hand picked by the players themselves. So instead of highlighting their own names, they fronted a sponsor led initiative in the name of all the football playing girls that are starved on female inspiration and attention for their sport.

Execution

We unveiled the new jersey at Algarve Cup, just a week before International Women’s day, in front of sport media from all over the world. We prepared a powerful campaign key visual with three adidas ambassadeurs, dressed in jerseys with, for example, a Zara Larsson quote: “Believe in your damn self”. We made a Swedish and global media outreach on the jerseys and the sponsorship. The tweets chosen were from influential female role models who also tweeted about the jerseys, reaching millions of people and spreading within influencers of our target group. On International Women’s day, we made sure that anyone could post a quote on interactive jerseys on large screens that we premiered at the Central Station in Stockholm. The same day the sales started with 10% revenues to football projects for girl’s football.

With no paid media at all, our sponsor led initiative reached +1 billion people with almost 100 percent presence of adidas, in text, image or both. Of the publicity, 90% was positive and 5% neutral. The engagement on the coverage was incredible. Guardian even made their own “case study film” on Facebook, with 2,5M views, 25K shares and hundreds of comments. Nearly every news media in Sweden covered the initiative. Our target audience embraced the campaign with pride. 83 percent of the people who have seen the initiative can now find a role model within the female team and 76 percent find the jersey to be a symbol of pride. 52 percent now feel more pride when wearing adidas. Or, to quote a young football playing girl: “Thank you for the inspiration and commitment for women's right within sports, even for women overall.” Besides the jerseys being sold out during the first week, adidas is now considered to be an inspiring brand for women and girls — our target audience, it’s up by 15 points. The brand purchase intent was 40% among those who had observed the campaign than among those who haven’t observed the campaign. And furthermore, those willing to pay more for adidas is up by 15 points. But most importantly; the brand loyalty and preference is up by 16 points and feeling pride when wearing adidas is up by 22 points.

The Situation

adidas asked for a campaign to highlight the Swedish national football team’s new jersey. By replacing the names with motivational tweets, contacting Swedish and global media, and launching the initiative during Algarve Cup, the jerseys got an earned media reach of +1 billion people. With no paid media at all.

The Strategy

Six out of ten Swedes can’t name a single female footballer and half of all the Swedish football playing girls consider quitting. And where would they find the strength to hang in there, when not getting the same inspiration as the boys do? The lack of inspirational role models is a threat to the national team, who risk losing great talent. Our strategy was to use female role models, women who never back down, and bring them with us out on the football pitch to cast a light on this important issue – and bring inspiration to the football playing girls in need of it.