BRINGING FUN BACK INTO A GAME THAT HAS BECOME TOO SERIOUS

Football fans take their love of their teams and the games to extreme levels. So much so that it’s become more obsession and less enjoyment. It’s become less about the entertainment and more about the stats, analytics, rankings, VAR, and big money contracts. As Pringles was gearing up for the football season with a partnership with legendary Barcelona striker, David Villa, we wanted to remind people that above all else, sport should be fun. So instead of making your typical celebrity endorsement campaign, we decided to have a little bit of fun with it.

TROLLING THE TROLLS

The campaign was launching in Saudi Arabia during a time when its football clubs were making the headlines for offering eye-watering sums of money to lure the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar, and Karim Benzema to play for the Saudi Pro League — with the most outrageous offer going to French superstar Kylian Mbappe for $1 billion. We decided that we wanted to get in on some of that buzz. So we launched the campaign by capitalizing on the buzz that Saudi Arabia was generating for going after international stars. We placed David Villa in the streets of Saudi Arabia and unleased Saudi football content creators to generate buzz about his potential interest in coming out of retirement to play for a Saudi Pro League club.

ADDRESSING THE RUMOURS

As the conversation picked up steam on the internet, we dropped the campaign with faux press conference announcing to the internet that they’ve just been punk’d and that David Villa was actually signing on as a Pringles Champion of Fun — a football ambassador that would bring fun back into watching the game and cheering for your team.

CHANGING THE FOOTBALL CONVERSATION

The campaign rolled out online with social activations and challenges from influencers that saw David Villa issuing challenges to his fun squad that asked them to turn the serious football discourse into something more fun. And with social content, we started conversations on more fun things about the football experience to avoid talking purely about football itself.

CREDITS
Brand: Pringles
Agency: Socialize / We Are Social Dubai
Executive Creative Director: Jason Velasquez Burayag
Senior Copywriter: Jack Rogers
Senior Art Director: James Young
Senior Art Director: Giulia De Chirico
Senior Art Director: Nour Mohammad
Producer: Martina Niranjini
Senior Videographer: Xavier Dell, Chris Gacal
Videographer: Gem Macalma
Account Management: Rhia Samuel, Mohammad Awkal
Production Company: The Company Films, Socialize