Champions Sofa

DIGITAL & SOCIAL campaign // digital // motion // Branding 

Sony Xperia were one of the official sponsors for the UEFA Champions League but no one really knew about it, let alone knew about what their Xperia handsets could do. The chief purpose of the campaign was to promote Sony Xperia’s sponsorship of the Champions League. The secondary aim is to raise awareness of the new Xperia handsets.

So we wanted to tap into the excitement surrounding every game by giving fans a unique social experience that had Sony Xperia mobile technology at the heart of it and an idea that appealed to people all over Europe. Not just to football fans, but also people with a passing interest in the game, and those who don’t care much about it.

Welcome to the Champions Sofa. A social campaign capturing fan reactions live, allowing people from all over Europe to watch other people from all over Europe watching UEFA Champions League games in the comfort of their own homes. With all the footage being captured and shared by Sony Xperia handsets.

We scoured Europe to find the most passionate Champions League club fans and filmed them, using Xperia phones, at home watching their teams’ matches. There were celebrations, tears – there were even six dancing pizza slices!

Before each game, a preview video promoted that night's live Twitter feed and cast, when we then streamed multiple live video feeds around Europe back to our newsroom in London, where we edited and published assets to Sony Xperia’s social media platforms instantly. After each match, the best moments were posted on Sony's Youtube playlist for a 30” catch up viewing the next morning.

Champions Sofa was launched at the Semi-Final stage of the 2015/16 competition and covered the Final too. Despite only being a soft launch, the campaign proved a massive success. So much so that the Champions Sofa came back for the 17/18 season, bigger and better, with celebrities on the sofa and more countries/markets getting involved. 

RESULTS:
• Uplift in Awareness and Association
• 6.9M+ views across first 5 games
• #ChampionsSofa Top 5 trending topic in UK, D, Fr, Sp and NL
• # 1 UCL brand in Twitter mentions
• Twitter used the campaign as their 'Best practice in Social campaigns' case study

NB: Some videos seem low quality as they are meant to be viewed via mobiles