💡 nutmeg fc #9
Today: (Some of) the best creative ideas from the football industry.
The World Cup of New Zealand and Australia is entering its defining phase and it is a good opportunity to share some of the best creative ideas that were generated for this event.
However, this time I want to do something different.
I chose what I consider to be the five pillars to empower women's football at a communication level and selected the best idea from each of these pillars.
Let's start.
Overcoming barriers and prejudices.
All of us who grew up watching exclusively men's football have countless conscious and unconscious prejudices. To break them down, there is nothing better than catching the public off guard and showing them (and proving to them) that women's football is much more spectacular than they think.
In this regard, there is no better campaign than that of Orange France, which, in English, would be entitled "The crazy things we have all forgotten about the French national team". In fact, I don't think there is a better campaign than this one of all those launched for the World Cup.
Availability.
At the moment, to watch women's football you have to want to watch women's football. It gets far less coverage than football played by men, their teams tend to have separate social media channels and even Google prioritises the men's version.
Johnnie Walker came up with the idea of creating memos to help people remember when matches are on (because they won't be easy to find) and explained it in a video starring Ted Lasso actress Hannah Waddingham.
But the idea that best represents this problem is that of Women in Sport Aotearoa, which is self-explanatory.
Making their stars known.
In nutmeg fc #6 we talked about how the new generation of fans now follow footballers more than football teams. For this reason, highlighting the stars of women's football is a key aspect of its future success. And it was the point that most brands focused on.
YPF, Adidas, Nike, Frito-Lay and Fox Sports, which is the one I liked the most, went this way.
Receiving support from mainstream figures.
In an interview she gave to France Football in 2020, Megan Rapinoe asked Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Zlatan Ibrahimovic to get more involved in social causes, mainly linked to racism and equality.
Whether of his own accord or under contractual obligation, Messi was present in two campaigns for the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. In the first, by Adidas, he is part of a melting pot of figures giving the message "play until they can't look away". In the second, from Budweiser, he is the protagonist and gives a speech in the first person, putting the winning team of this World Cup on a par with the winning Argentina in Qatar.
No doubt Messi's presence will have helped to generate more interest in the event, although I think something as simple as Messi uploading a post watching the match would have had much more impact. The time difference didn't help, but who would have known if the photo had been prepared beforehand?
Reinforcing its uniqueness.
Shortly before the World Cup started I read an article about the players who would miss the cup and it was a shock for me to find out that the vast majority of them did so because of a ligament injury. This is due to many factors, from biological characteristics related to gender to the type of training, the boots they wear, or the grounds they play on.
But it can all be grouped under one main problem: women's football is taken as an extension of men's football. And while it is true that they share many things in common, there are others in which they are completely different. Reinforcing these points that make it unique is the fifth pillar in promoting women's football.
It is not a point that the brands wanted to touch on in general, perhaps because they wanted to maintain the festive tone that is usually associated with World Cups. Among those that did, Panenka Magazine's "Guard your rights" idea with Futpro and FleKick stands out.
And now, let’s vote: