In the third year of working with the UEFA Europa League, we were tasked with building on our existing work to reposition the competition as edgy and ambitious, to the growing fan-base across Europe.

Our psychology tool HumanValues™ revealed a number of values-based fan commonalities between the top 5 markets – adventure, visible success, exhilaration and speculation. These fans were thrill-seekers who love the unpredictability of the game and want to have their finger on the pulse of anything that’s new and a bit edgy.

Our strategy was to disrupt football fans into reappraising the value of the UEL by taking people on a journey of discovery, to uncover the real and thrilling face of European football.

We created three campaign strands, each to highlight a different and unexpected side of the Europa League:

‍Unscripted Stories, the marquee piece, told four stories of how the passion and attitude of the clubs and players had lead to them taking up their place on the European stage.

Europa Night Hype brought a different take on the classic hype content, instead looking through the lens of exciting and unusual perspectives on upcoming games to get the fans pumped up.

Celebrate the Unexpected looked at great moments from the game which were chosen based on the insight of the fan’s desire for unpredictability– those that went truly off-script or could not have been predicted were the moments to highlight.

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