Title	INSTANT WELCOME
Brand	INTER MEDIA HOUSE
Product/Service	PLAYER ANNOUNCEMENTS
Category	D03. Sports: Digital & Social
Entrant	INTER MEDIA HOUSE Milan, ITALY
Idea Creation	INTER MEDIA HOUSE Milan, ITALY
Idea Creation 2	ALKEMY Milan, ITALY
Production	INTER MEDIA HOUSE Milan, ITALY
Production 2	ALKEMY Milan, ITALY

Name	Company	Position
Jan Mattassi	Alkemy digital_enabler	Creative Supervisor
Marco Tironi	Alkemy digital_enabler	Creative Supervisor
Demetrio Chirico	Alkemy digital_enabler	Copywriter
Andrea Masciullo	Alkemy digital_enabler	Copywriter
Mauro Breda	Alkemy digital_enabler	Art director
Gianluca Gianelli	Alkemy digital_enabler	Art director
Silvia Galbiati	Alkemy digital_enabler	Content Specialist
Federico Spagnolo	Alkemy digital_enabler	Social Media Manager
Federico Magnani	Alkemy digital_enabler	Analyst
Roberto Scarpini	FC Internazionale Milano	Head of Inter TV
Jacopo Pulcini	FC Internazionale Milano	Account Manager

Why is this work relevant for Entertainment?

With the Instant Welcome video series, online sentiment switched from expecting a new player to expecting a new player in order to see a new Welcome Video, thus raising expectations and creating a new benchmark for football transfer market announcements in Italy and Europe.

Background

Inter Media House is quickly growing and becoming the football team content editor with the most impact. But to stay on top, it is important to keep being innovative. The right moment came about after Inter qualified for the Champions League for the first time in seven years and bought Radja “The Ninja” Nainggolan from AS Roma. The objective was to celebrate the new signing with premium content that would be appealing to fans and non-fans alike in order to establish Inter as a global brand. There is, however, one key problem: negotiations are such a delicate matter that we might only know about the new player a few days before they are signed or, in the worst-case scenario, on the same day, so planning of the production was crucial.

Describe the creative idea

Inter’s Instant Welcome is a real-time video series to introduce a new player in a non-football context using premium content, with this happening together with the official announcement.

Describe the strategy

Sports clubs already have the attention of their fans. But to further establish Inter as a global brand, our strategy had to aim at the widest audience possible and combine this with impressive output. Transfer market campaigns are characterised by traditional press conferences and social media coverage that only plays a supporting role. But before that, there are only rumours. There is virtually no time to produce quality content: we usually only get one to three days. To be innovative when a new player makes their first public appearance as an Inter player, we have to be quick. We therefore designed an agile production approach so that we were able to shoot an original video featuring each new player, with this video then being released along with the official announcement, traditional press release, official photo or press conference video.

Describe the execution

On average, the time span from the official agreement to the signing of the contract and first public appearance of the player is 1 to 3 days. This is the time we have to write a script for each video as well as shoot and edit it. There is an added difficulty: players are not readily available and new players even more so. So for each production, we had to forsee a maximum player commitment of 20 minutes. Release timeline: 26 Jun: Radja Nainggolan 30 Jun: Matteo Politano 4 Jul: Lautaro Martinez 10 Jul: Kwawdo Asamoah 11 Jul: Stefan De Vrij 2 Aug: Šime Vrsaljko 16 Aug: Keita Baldé The videos appeared on Facebook, Instagram and Instagram Stories with behind-the-scenes content on Instagram TV and Dugout.

Describe the outcome

7,5+ M video views 100+ M impressions 200,000 new followers on Instagram +130% fanbase growth compared to same period, 2017 Less than €400 media budget