Heetch - this small brand is the real winner of the World Cup with cheeky hack

The real World Cup winner !

Hvala vam ! (thank you in Croatian)

Every four years for the World Cup, all the biggest brands face off to be highly visible during the global event and end up spending tens of millions of dollars.

Unless the name of your brand is Heetch and you have come up with a smart plan to compete against bigger players.
 

Here is it: the biggest advertising campaign ever !

It all started several weeks before the start of the World Cup. Heetch reached out on Instagram to Zlatko Dalić, manager of the Croatian football team. Why ? To kindly ask him for a favour. Could he select in his squad a maximum of players with ic in their surnames, such as Modrić, Livaković, Orsic, Brozović etc ?

Because when you read their names aloud, all that you hear is the name of the brand. Heetch Real cheeky, isn’t it ?

And thanks to the incredible run of Croatia during the World Cup, football pundits and journalists couldn't keep Heetch's name out of their mouth. On average, Heetch was mentioned 178 times during each game when Croatia was playing. Heetch also did its part during the competition and messaged players to urge them to touch the ball even more.

TV viewers rapidly made the connection and shared how every football game was suddenly becoming a huge commercial for Heetch's ride-sharing app.

The results: amazing !

If we take into account all the mentions of players with names ending in ić, earned media for Heetch was stratospheric: 897 120 seconds of air time in 135 territories and on 720 different media networks for a reach of 3,5 billion people in total. This amounts to an equivalent of 5,3 billion euros of media investment ... with an absolute 0€ media buy.

Brand: Heetch
Brand Managers: Renaud Berthe, Hector Gruyer, Benjamin Sousa, Noomen Ben Mustapha
Ad Agency: BETC Paris
Agency Managers: Mathieu Laugier, Aude Devaux
Chief Creative Officer: Stephane Xiberras
Executive Creative Director: Olivier Aumard
Creatives: Natan Ritaly, Raphael Sold
Traffic Manager: Nathalie Sanseigne
Strategic Planners: Armonie Sanders, Bilel Mahjoub
Sound Company: GUM