Title	VOODOO FOOTBALL DOLLS
Brand	CANAL+
Product/Service	CANAL+
Category	A09. Media / Entertainment
Entrant	BETC Paris, FRANCE
Idea Creation	BETC Paris, FRANCE
Production	RITA FILMS Paris, FRANCE
Production 2	LGM Paris, FRANCE

Name	Company	Position
Stéphane Xiberras	BETC	CCO
Eric Astorgue	BETC	Creative Director
Guillaume Fouquere	BETC	Art Director
Danae Bilheude	BETC	Copywriter
Charles Barraud	BETC	Art Director
Guilaume Simonneau	BETC	Art Director
Sarah Belhadj	BETC	Producer
Coumba Fall	Rita	TV Producer
Stephen Cafiero	NA	Director
Guillaume Espinet, Valentin Beck, Thibault Cuisiniez, Pierre-Alain Moreau	BETC	Agency Management
Mathilde Villette, Jordane de Villaret, Gauthier Lapeyronnie	CANAL+	Brand Management

Why is this work relevant for Brand Experience & Activation ?

PSG-OM, the French Classico is THE football event of year, and can be seen only on Canal+. But this game is also a symbol of the strong passion football can create. A passion that can sometimes turn into violence… We used supporters’ rivalry to feed the discussion around the game and at the same time make it fun and respectful again. The idea? Voodoo dolls from each team, and a 360 campaign to link digital (film that presented the dolls, and a website that allowed supporters to pin it) and reality (with real dolls shared through an PR kit).

Background

Sport is one of the most important parts of Canal+ package. But through the years Canal+ Sport has become less and less attractive. This is why, when it’s time for the Classico, one of the major games of the Canal+ sport offer, it is very important to push it in communication: - To reinforce the image of Canal+ and create value around its sports offer - To create business, and encourage new subscribers The communication objective was to find a way to be sure people were going knew that this major game was coming, and that it was exclusively on Canal+.

Describe the creative idea

First, the idea was to create something that could be integrated into the passionate discussion that was going to happen before the game. As PSG and OM is mostly a story about rivalry. If we were to find something that could symbolize it, we would have a solid chance to integrate the pre-game discussion. Second, we wanted it to be cool, and fun, to erase the negative image of OM and PSG rivalry. Third, we wanted of course something that could be coherent with our context : a football game. This is where we came up with voodoo dolls ! - A symbol of both teams - A way to talk about rivalry in a fun way - A way to use football supporters theme : superstition

Describe the strategy

To be sure people would hear about our dolls, we needed a film. The best way to show the dolls exist, and how to use them. Then we needed to create a way for supporters to actually pin the dolls: through our website supporters had the choice to pin the PSG doll or the OM doll… as many times as they wanted ! And as people are competitive about this kind of thing, we posted the number of pins each doll had. Finally, we also created real dolls that we shared through PR kits, to get the community involved and show this was all for real ! All in all, even if the dolls were the stars of the operation, they always came attached with the same message : PSG-OM will be aired next Sunday exclusively on Canal+

Describe the execution

We launched the film one week before the game and sent out PR kits. And of course, as both redirected to the website, we also launched the website. All that week, we managed to get our real dolls used by all the Canal+ presenters, to create a mood around the operation, and keep up the shares. We also shared it through Canal+ social media, and even used a conversational card on twitter, to engage people on the best media to create a discussion. Finally, the D-DAY we shared the website score on L’EQUIPE, a famous French sport daily paper, to incite people to keep on going to the website to make their team win the match… and of course keep on alerting on the Canal+ exclusivity to air the game.

List the results

Film: - 4M views Website : - More than 9.5M pins Twitter : 100K people engaged through a conversational card