Heuvos

Football Fans are the 12th player on the pitch. Fan support is crucial to a team and what  drives the passion of fans is not money, but sheer love of the game. Nowhere is this more in evidence than the passion for the World Cup. Passionate fans of Mexico followed their country through the qualification stage and suffered. Results during the classification games were the poorest ever results of the National soccer team during this stage.

As far as Nike were concerned, Adidas – the Mexican national team official sponsor, did little to motivate the team or the fans. Nike noticed this approach from Adidas, and decided that was time to fire up the fans for Mexico.

From the moment the team walks out on to the pitch, the response of the fans is critical. If the team walks out to a quiet stadium, they know the fans are worried, fearful, angry or have just given up. As Mexico was on the verge of failing to qualify for World Cup 2010, Nike tapped into the powerful influence of the fans to inspire their National Team to have the “Huevos” to win.

Nike constructed a campaign to make “Huevos” the rallying cry for the build up to the important game against the USA. “Huevos” was a fans-centric movement that generated rapid awareness and trust amongst the fans, and had the ability to spread quickly through fan-based communications channels. Fans were encouraged to do three things in the 10 days before the next big game:

Nike placed ads with definitions of the word “Huevos” in the two bibles of football “Record” and “La Aficion”. They secured an agreement with Record to replace words of encouragement in articles about the National side with the word “Huevos”. A “Huevos” Facebook page whipped up supporter participation and encouraged the “Huevos” fans to get together at the Nike store before the game.

Finally, in a high profile stunt, Nike gave out 5,000 “Huevos” t-shirts and 3,000 flags to Mexico supporters at the game. Branded buses and transported fans to the match, and Nike’s “Huevos” branding took over the match.

Through the campaign, Nike secured $160.000 in publicity - twice the original investment. The Facebook page received 47,330 comments & 17,300 fans compared to the Adidas official fanpage which only had 1,509 fans. The “Huevos” t-shirt is a bestseller in Mexico. And the result of the match? Mexico qualified.