Women's Euro Sponsor Campaigns: Full Round-Up
Women’s Euro Sponsor Campaigns: Full Round-Up
The UEFA Women’s Euros is poised to break records and change the game around Europe, but the action isn’t only happening on the field.
With 18 official sponsors of the UEFA Women’s Euros, we’ve done a round-up of each and every sponsor’s campaign around the tournament.
UEFA Official Global Sponsors and National Sponsors
There are 13 Official Global Sponsors: Booking.com, Euronics, Grifols, Heineken, Hisense, Just Eat, PepsiCo, Visa, VW, Adidas, Hublot, Nike, Tik Tok.
There are 5 National Sponsors: Gillette Venus, Lego, Linkedin, Pandora, Starling Bank.
UEFA Women’s Euro Sponsorship Campaigns
Most Valuable Player: Nike
Nike were the clear winner in our eyes. Not only because of their unique, share-worthy and meaningful ‘Never Seen’ campaign but because they triple-downed with 3 campaigns centred around the tournament.
Never Seen campaign:
Nike’s Never Seen campaign leveraged iconic landmarks and clever media placements to showcase the England Lionesses and their playing traits via projections on the eve of kick-off.
They used taglines like “You’ve never seen power like this” featured alongside an image of Lucy Bronze on a power plant or “You’ve never seen speed like this” featuring Lauren Hemp in a train station.
Nike campaign shot by Getty Images (via Christopher Sleet Linkedin)
Why we love it:
1. The visual scale and impact reflected the quality and impact of the tournament.
2. Telling player stories through creative use of landmarks was not only visually unique but enabled fans to learn more about the star’s playing traits.
3. Clever use of budget with the operational and media costs only required for one night but the reach earned from editorial and people sharing being significant.
Better still, they created a soiree of campaigns leading into the tournament with these 2 additional strands:
Nike x Elle magazine feature:
- Showcased the players like never before in covers and a 16-page feature in a shoot labelled ‘Everyone’s Game’.
Never Settle, Never Done:
- A fast paced, high energy anthem and beautiful social content captures the intersection of sport and culture and calls for women’s football to keep pushing forward through a brilliant showcase of elite and grassroots skill, talent and confidence.
Plus this awesome collaboration with iconic book series, Rebel Girls featuring 12 of Europe’s best women footballers and even cool activations like fusball tables with ‘women’s’ players!
Runner-Up: TikTok
Fandom campaign:
We’re awarding official entertainment platform partner, TikTok as Runner-Up.
We loved their laser focus on fandom and how they took what could have just been a simple content campaign to the next level by delivering at every turn to add to the fan experience.
They created bespoke Euro special effects and sounds that Users could add to their TikTok videos and enabled fans to join in with TikTok Lives and Euro-inspired hashtag challenges.
The official UEFA TikTok channel has comprehensive behind-the-scenes and game action coupled with a daily 'Cultural Highlights' compilation showcasing fan moments.
They are also leveraging key football Influencers like Alex Scott, Beth Mead and Liv Cooke to give a unique window into the tournament and partnered with BBC to provide additional video moments.
They are also tackling negativity on the pitch by encouraging the community to #SwipeOutHate.
Lastly and what we’re most impressed with was how they took their fandom focus off TikTok and teamed up with COPA90 to bring fans the ultimate local guide to watching the tournament with tips on travelling to the stadium, nearby attractions and the best places to eat when you get there
The Sponsorship Playing Squad
While they may not have picked up the MVP or Runner-Up award, it was great to see so many sponsors execute marketing campaigns that scored points for themselves, the tournament and women’s football.
Heineken: 12th Women
Heineken built on their UEFA Women’s Champion’s League, Fresher Football campaign that shone a light on gender bias in football but this time took aim at sexist terminology that exists in the game i.e. ‘man on’, ‘man mark’ and ‘12th man’.
Their light-hearted and entertaining ‘12th Woman’ campaign called for ALL fans to get behind the tournament and support it as though they were the ‘12th WOman’ supporter.
They also had a nice tie in with Women In Football to buy 12th Woman T-shirts with all proceeds going to the organisation.
Starling Bank: Fantasy Football
Starling Bank helped launch the first official women’s Football Fantasy competition. We’re used to seeing every men’s tournament give fans the opportunity to participate in Fantasy Leagues but Starling Bank came to the party and ensured fans had the opportunity to get involved.
The innovation-first felt like a natural brand and product fit for Starling Bank. It will no doubt help grow the game by pulling in new fans and give people more insight into the players and teams.
PepsiCo: Doritos, Walkers, Pepsi Max
PepsiCo activated an impressive point-of-sale campaign to help raise player familiarity with on-pack promotion across Doritos, Pepsi Max and Walkers featuring England players Lucy Bronze, Nikita Parris and Leah Williamson. They also ran an on-pack competition providing fans with the chance to win 750 pairs of match tickets.
They campaign was centred on getting ‘Match Ready’ which naturally fit with product consumption around the game and the tournament itself.
Doritos also teamed up with Jill Scott to promote the partnership above-the-line with Scott also providing tips and tricks around wellbeing and being match-ready.
PepsiCo: Gatorade Match Officials
Part of PepsiCo, Gatorade leveraged the sponsorship by boosting female match officials’ health and performance with a range of personalised consultations on hydration, sports nutrition, and menstruation. They also are using the innovative Gx Sweat Patches during the games for continued assessment and data capture.
It was a nice change to see Gatorade backing the other elite women on the field, the match officials rather than their usual player campaigns and no doubt data garnered from the patches will benefit the wider football community.
Volkswagon: Not Women’s Football
Similar to Heineken’s 12th Woman campaign, VW looked to tackle bias in football language and focused on the use of gender qualifiers around “women’s” football.
They used a series of clever examples to highlight the point that WOMEN’S football is just ‘FOOTBALL’ and accompanied the campaign with a witty tagline, ‘Not Women’s Football’.
Linkedin: Follow in her footsteps
Linkedin used their ‘Follow In Her Footsteps’ campaign to highlight the importance of visibility and role models.
They teamed up with the first-ever England Euro’s captain, Carol Thomas to showcase how far women’s football has come. Carol stepped through history, literally with a 30 mile walk from Gretsy Stadium in Crewe where the first ever Euros match was played to Old Trafford where the opening match of this year’s tournament took place.
The captured Carol’s story in the video below and extended the campaign with out-of-home executions showcasing other female role models and encouraging others to “Follow in Her Footsteps”.
Adidas:
Adidas followed up their earlier ‘How to Stop Sweden’ team shirt launch and PR activation where the German, Spain and Belgium men’s team wore their women’s kits, by creating 4 player murals across London.
Female artists’ captured Mapi Leon, Millie Bright, Vivianne Miedema and Wendie Renard in a design that visualises the player’s story, framed by their goals.
They also created a short video for each player that encapsulated the same concept;
Mapi Leon, Millie Bright, Vivianne Miedema and Wendy Renard.
Just Eat: 101
Just Eat are supporting the newfound interest that the Euro’s will generate by supporting 101 new grassroots women’s teams across the UK by providing gear and resources to help get them started.
They tapped into the history around The FA banning women’s football 101 years ago by getting behind 101 women’s teams today.
They are of course also offering various match deals around the tournament.
Hisense: Remember the Name
While the execution felt a bit removed from an authentic representation of women’s football it was nonetheless great to see Hisense activating their sponsorship above-the-line.
They managed to get some organic product shots in there and capture how the tournament was about to create household names and take the world by storm.
Visa: Team Talks
Worldwide and key women’s football supporter, Visa showcased the synergies between sport and business and focused on the positive impact that football can have on female entrepreneurs.
They produced 10sec vignettes below either showcasing the stars of the tournament or women business owners with the tag “Because when more of us play, all of us win”.
They also enlisted former England player and pundit, Karen Carney in a video series called ‘Team Talks’ that delved into the skills gained from football that can be transferred into business.
Lego: Fantastical Football
Lego focused their campaign on ‘play’ with experiential Lego activity at the official Euro’s fan parties encouraging people to create their own fantastical football team.
They ran out-of-home and digital executions showcasing how ‘play’ can make anything possible.
They coupled this with grassroots programmes including school lesson plans and content featuring Lionesses to inspire kids to play on and off the pitch.
Booking.com: ‘Fan’-tastic pitch view penthouse
Booking.com focused on their brand proposition around providing memorable experience’s with the opportunity for fans to book out an overnight football experience at Wembley Stadium for the final.
I would have loved to have seen a spin that was unique to the women’s game in this activation that is becoming a common roll-out among ‘experience’ sponsors but it was still great to see this ‘money can’t buy’ experience on offer.
Pandora: For every story
Pandora created a bespoke Euro’s inspired jewelry collection to celebrate the inspirational women that bring the tournament to life on and off the field.
They teamed up with Lionesses, Rachel Daly and Nikita Parris and encouraged others to share their story via #ForEveryStory in order to inspire others to follow their dreams.
They are also providing 20 grassroots girl’s football teams with funding so they can pursue their football dreams.
Euronics:
In Italy where football is a religion, prejudices still exist about women's football and electronic’s retailer, Euronics looked to kick these out.
They used #RigoreControGliStereotipi to rally against stereotypes and tackle prejudice in order to create a better and more open football where everyone is welcome - see video in Italian below.
They also created a ‘Wall of Female’ and encouraged people to write down and upload a photo of the prejudice they wanted to see kicked out. In Germany they created a podcast featuring women footballers and in the UK they apparently ran a measly Facebook competition to win tickets which sadly returned an error message.
Subs bench
There were a few sponsors that seemed to be missing in action be it through a lack of activation, being undiscoverable or not having a meaningful campaign around the tournament. No doubt this will prove to be a lost opportunity.
Hublot:
Outside of having 2 women’s footballers on their existing Ambassador roster (Alexia Putellas and Ada Hegerberg) Hublot seemed to have no campaign-able presence outside the field of action.
Disappointingly Alexia and Ada aren’t even currently featured on Hublot channels and instead Instagram user are greeted with tennis and running Ambassadors.
Grifols:
It was hard to find any consumer-facing campaigns or activations from the Spanish medical company.
No doubt they focused their efforts on employee engagement and business hospitality opportunities given their heavy B2B nature and unique product.
Gillette Venus:
Gillette Venus said they would use their sponsorship to champion ‘skinclusivity’ with the campaign ‘Move Your Skin’ to normalise what real skin looks like when women play sport but at this stage they seem to be fairly invisible.
Instead the only sponsorship action seems to be an in-store ticket give-away, a few sporadic Instagram posts displaying graphic facts about skin and sport and a video from 2019 featuring ‘Sarah, a professional soccer player’ with an American accent.
Are you a women’s sport sponsor or interested in becoming one and want to know exactly what I liked and thought could be improved in every single campaign above, then drop me a note on rebecca@teamheroine.com.