The UEFA Champions League is Heineken’s biggest investment and sponsorship deal, providing a unique football and viewing experience to over a billion consumers worldwide. But Africa is only represented in the UCL through its football players. They have no teams playing. There are no games on the continent to go watch live. There’s a huge football community who can only experience the game through a TV, remote and distant from the energy of the stadiums.
Since the sponsorship platform activates over the whole first half of the year, we needed to find a way to bring the game closer to Africa and to our consumers, bringing a world-class experience like only Heineken can, all for the love of the game and the hearts of our consumers.
So, we developed a Trophy Tour campaign that saw the involvement of four of our key markets - Nigeria, Mozambique, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo - all pooling their budgets together to secure top footballing talent and a 5-star regional media deal with DStv and SuperSport to support the Trophy Tour.
It was a five-city, four-country tour where the UCL Trophy was flown to each market alongside our secured top talent, Clarence Seedorf (four-time UCL winner and the only footballer in history to win the Champion’s League Trophy with three different clubs). During the tour, consumers, customers and trade and government representatives all attended a premium world class UCL Heineken Experience and had the opportunity for a meet and greet with Clarence and an opportunity to have a selfie with the UCL trophy.