GLOBE TEAMED UP WITH EA SPORTS TO PIT THE GLOBAL BREAKTHROUGH ARTIST OF 2017 BIG SHAQ AND FIFA FAN FAVOURITE DANNY WELBECK AGAINST EACH OTHER TO SEE WHO WOULD BE CROWNED KING OF THE #MATCHUPS
The Story:
EA Sports brief to Globe was to create a campaign that:
- Transcends FIFA 18 beyond the worlds of football and gaming.
- Sees FIFA 18 develop an editorial voice & own the conversation in the mainstream media and online to both broad and diverse football loving audiences.
- Makes FIFA 18 a culturally unmissable part of youth culture and to recruit and acquire the next generation of FIFA players.
Our Solution:
Footballers want to be rockstars and rockstars want to be footballers.
Whether it’s Yannick Bolasie laying down bars on Soccer AM, Jese Rodriguez releasing his own debut single (30m views and counting), Noel Gallagher begging to interview his footballing hero Mario Balotelli or Stormzy announcing the arrival of the world’s most expensive footballer in Paul Pogba, the synergy has never been tighter.
And the timing has never been more perfect.
Merging, arguably the three largest culturally relevant worlds of Sport, Gaming and Music, we wanted to ensure that we left nothing down to chance. We chose to work with THE most culturally relevant artist of 2017 in Big Shaq and a FIFA fan favourite footballer in Danny Welbeck to conceive, produce & deliver a piece of viral content that would celebrate the launch of the biggest sporting game of the year in true global style.
The Golden Rules for any brand partnership are…
Audience
Authenticity
Collaboration
Timing
Value
This collaboration hit every single apex.
Audience – at a time when Michael Dapaah’s latest persona Big Shaq was all anyone could talk about, we were able to deliver relevant content to an audience of X million music loving football fans
Authenticity – on his long awaited goalscoring return from injury Welbeck posts Big Shaq’s lyrics on his Instagram. This gave us our reason to sync the two up
Collaboration –We created a brand new format from scratch that was tailored to both Big Shaq & Danny Welbeck that worked for both EA and them.
Timing – 3 weeks after releasing the official music video for ‘Man’s Not Hot’ we were able to release our MatchUp to an audience who were actively seeking out any content that featured the sensation that was Big Shaq.
Activation
EA and UMG wanted to create a culturally relevant moment that helped EA to diversify their targeted audience for the release of FIFA 18….the World’s biggest sport game release of the year.
Big Shaq’s grime parody Man’s not hot has had over 166 million video views and has been streamed 45 million times on Spotify, and at the time was in the running for Christmas Number 1. We knew he was hot property, but we also started to see a clear synergy between Big Shaq and his HOT new track and football players and fans
Footballers were using his classic line ‘skrrrrp pap pap pap’ to celebrate their goals on-pitch and fans were creating their own versions of the track, substituting lyrics for football players. Using Universal Music’s insight and EA’s reactivity & knowledge of their audience, we sought to create a piece of content that was both socially and culturally pertinent and one which we knew would be extremely reactive. We matched Big Shaq with FIFA-fan favourite Danny Welbeck to go head-to-head in a game of FIFA 18 – ‘Winner takes the jacket’. The concept was humble and allowed both of their true personalities to shine. The execution and timing was immaculate.
We worked closely with EA to develop a strategic social and advertising strategy to ensure that we were cross-promoting all content to maximise reach, views and engagement.
Owning over 37 billion cookies of first-party data of our artist’s fans, we were able to establish that Big Shaq’s audience had a huge crossover with a FIFA/Football audience and it meant that we were in the strongest position to be able to amplify the promotion of content directly onto the screens of Big Shaq fans.
We enlisted the help of Universal Music’s in-house programmatic data specialists; Fused, who promoted the content via Michael Dapaah’s Facebook (via a cross-promoted post), Instagram Page (via Instagram story ads) and YouTube channel (via a pre-roll video ad).
The Results:
The content speaks for itself….it generated over 5 Million views in the first 24 hours as well as picking up key press coverage across the UK’s biggest press outlets, The total content views currently stand at 20 Million and the online press coverage alone reached a whopping 25 Million people.
The Social resonance of the campaign was HUGE. Being able to deliver the content to a relevant football & music loving audience of almost 190 million people (that’s over 100 times the audience that Michael has across his own channels) meant that the campaign became an integral part of Island’s campaign to take Shaq global.
The success of the campaign has seen the birth of a format that sees the great and good of the football & music worlds collide.
Big Shaq’s biggest fan Noel Gallagher meets future World Cup winner John Stones.
Tottenham born but Arsenal loving lyricist Wretch 32 takes on Spurs wonderkid Dele Alli.
And Festival Headliners Biffy Clyro set up a Scotland versus England grudge match against Peter ‘the mosher’ Crouch and his Stoke team-mates.
In 2018, FIFA’s partnership with Universal will see them further cement themselves as their own editorial brand. How many other brands can say that?
Testimonial:
“The collaboration between EA and Universal has been best-in-class from our point of view – a partnership that combines two of the most popular UK interests, FIFA and music. The Big Shaq vs. Danny Welbeck initiative has proved to be some of the best content we’ve ever produced, escalating our influence beyond gaming, and even beyond football, into entertainment and popular culture – it’s been a truly innovative activation and we’re excited about what’s still to come!” (James Taylor, Senior Marketing & Communications Manager, Electronic Arts)