The Decade That Was - II

Last week we spoke about the previous decade and our favourite sporting memories from the decade. And although our team is not completely filled with nerds we do geek out on the topic of sports and hence here we are with part two of our last week’s article with a small twist. This week we are talking about the best sports marketing campaigns/activations from the previous decade that our team absolutely loved. The only thing our team geeks out on apart from sports is smart, quirky and efficient marketing.

So here’s our list of favourite sports marketing campaigns from the decade that was:

#1 RedBull Stratos

Red Bull, the Austrian energy drink company, is known by its tagline ‘Red Bull gives you wings’. In 2012 they took their tagline a little too seriously when they sponsored Austrian skydiver and daredevil Felix Baumgartner for a ‘space dive’. Titled ‘Red Bull Stratos’ project, witnessed Felix jumping from the edge of the Stratosphere while millions across the world saw this one of a kind phenomena on their desk via a Youtube Livestream. This activation was by far one of the craziest activations in the history of sports and something that only a brand like Red Bull could pull off.

#2 Nike Equality

In early 2017, Nike launched its Equality campaign to create and join a conversation by illustrating the existence of equality in sports. The use of black and white hues in the visuals further helped their cause.

#3 Mauka Mauka

Summer of 2015, ICC Cricket World Cup was just starting when Star Sports came up with this brilliant campaign for the fierce rivalry clash between India & Pakistan. The music was catchy, it was slightly in bad taste but captured the essence of the rivalry between the two neighbouring nations. The campaign became an overnight hit which led to Star eventually just continuing with these ads for rest of India's fixtures in the world cup till they were knocked out in the Semifinals.

#4 Deadpool at Manchester United

When 21st Century Fox decided to partner with Manchester United to promote a superhero movie in 2016, a lot of eyebrows were raised. Who would have thought Wayne Rooney would share screen space with Deadpool after all. But it did happen and well the United fanbase did have a good laugh just like they had during the movie.

And hence it wasn't surprising they did a collaboration again in 2018 for the sequel.

#5 Thank You, Mom - P&G

The Olympics Games has seen some of the best marketing campaigns ever, but if you have to pick one out among those, it will be this campaign by Proctor & Gamble. They first came up with this at the 2012 Summer Games at London. And followed it up with the following games in 2014, 2016 & 2018.

#6 Stevenage Challenge - Burger King

Our regular followers must have already read our previous article on this campaign. This is one of the smartest activations done by any sponsor in football. The engagement it drew, the hype it generated and the money that it helped generate for a small club like Stevenage FC is just amazing.

#7 Fight For Territory

An activation that was just as exciting and rare as the Lions Rugby Tour in New Zealand engaged fans to make the once every 12 years event more memorable. During this tour, the All Blacks sponsor, Steinlager, found fans and teams spending the most time in the airport. Steinlager bought every sign in every terminal and created an interactive competition with the Lion’s sponsor, Guinness. The Lion’s could have the signs for free, they just had to fight for them.

Fans stood in front of one of the 65 interactive digital screens and changed the messaging of the screen according to the team they supported. Thanks to bespoke image recognition software and mobile WAP technology, sports fans were putting up a fierce fight to alter every sign across terminals. The battle between fans throughout the 6-week tour saw 2.5 million people pass through the airport and resulted in 96,000 screen changes

#8 King of Football - Budweiser

Another campaign that we have previously talked about in our blog, Budweiser did a one of it's kind activation to celebrate the incredible feat by Lionel Messi of scoring 644 goals for a single club. They made 644 unique personalised beer bottles and gifted it to the goalkeepers he scored those respective goals against. This campaign created a lot of buzz and social traction and also obviously increased sales for them.

#9 The 'pit' activation - Rexona

By far the quirkiest of them all, this activation come right at the end of the decade. Rexona the body deodorant brand signed as the sponsors for the latest edition of the BBL (the Australian cricket T20 League). But the plans they had to promote the brand was something that was never seen before. They placed their logos in the armpit of the umpires' shirts, hence making them visible every time the umpire raised their hands, which in cricket is a very regular phenomenon.

That was the list of our favourite campaigns from the previous decade, is there anything you love and we missed? We would like to know, tell us in the comments below.