Agency: Fuse, London

Roles: Executive Creative Director & Executive Producer

Project Type: Live Activation & Content

Case Study:

As ‘The Official Carrier of The UEFA Champions League,’ our client FedEx, asked us to look at how we could create a PR-able moment to maximise brand association as a sponsor, in the days leading up to the 2024 Final in London.

We went to UEFA and their agency TEAM, to discuss how we might create a moment within their Fan Festival programming, to do something special that would deliver value for all parties and fans alike.

The opportunity was to create a moment where we would officially deliver the UEFA Champions League trophy to London, opening their Regent Street Fan Festival and the weekend’s festivities. Delivering the most prized possession in European Football, to the host city of the final, deserves true pomp and ceremony. The Champions League anthem is one of the most iconic assets, and so we engaged The Royal Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, to play a live rendition. Using our campaign talent, UCL Legend Claude Makele, and the winning courier of an internal competition, we had the core ingredients to create a ceremonial moment to open the UEFA Champions League Final weekend in London, that would get press coverage and disrupt social media feeds.

The planning process was over just a few weeks and incredibly complex, with over 10 key stakeholder parties to satisfy, to getting a FedEx van through a strict network of road closures, to working out the actual performance with a symphony orchestra. The Fan Festival site itself was an overnight build, with official sign-off and production access just one hour before our performance. The stakes were high.

We had a 300m walk to the stage from the FedEx van, through a busy crowd of fans, where I had to call timings for 6 different film and photo crews to get their necessary shots- as it was a one-take only situation. The event was not scheduled and so we wanted to draw public attention to the stage organically, to create a ‘wow’ moment. We choreographed the singers to start early and create attention to draw people into the area, as the trophy was wheeled through the crowd and up onto the stage to be presented to the live rendition of the anthem.

Content was propagated to news channels within the hour, getting coverage on BBC News and many other mainstream outlets. The UEFA social team got one of the highest view counts of the weekend on their asset. Working with FootballCo, we created the high quality asset above which was proliferated across the Goal.com network and paid social within 24hrs. A hugely complicated, but very successful multi-channel activation that delivered serious ROI, for a very happy client.

European Media Coverage: