Sookio Bootcamp 2023 graduate Chloe Taylor analyses the innovative marketing behind the recent Women’s World Cup, with examples from Orange and ITV that show how far both football and technology have come.

Whilst the dream may be over for England’s Lionesses in lieu of their recent defeat against Spain, the success of the Women’s World Cup marketing campaigns has been nothing short of incredible.

From impressive CGI and special effects to touching demonstrations of women’s history in sports, let’s look closely at what exactly landed these campaigns in the net of consumers, and brought a new focus to women’s football.

The challenge for advertisers around women’s football

Throughout history, football has traditionally been seen as a ‘men’s sport’, with the Men’s World Cup dominating the screens. Despite modern football being established in the 19th century, women were seemingly excluded and discouraged from playing. It wasn’t until 1971 when this began to change, with the first (recognised) women’s international match taking place.

The men’s game does reach substantially more viewers; data from FIFA shows that the 2022 World Cup in Qatar achieved a global reach of close to 1.5 billion, whilst the final of the Women’s World Cup did not reach these high numbers. UK viewership peaked at around 12 million views on BBC platforms - reportedly less than the viewership numbers of the Lionesses’ Euro final a year prior.

So this presents an interesting challenge to advertisers. And an opportunity! Let’s dissect some of the campaigns around the Women’s World Cup adverts to identify the trends and approaches that proved to be most successful.

Hyundai: Goal of the Century

Pulling at the heart strings, Hyundai’s Women’s World Cup advert brings into focus the troubling history of women’s role in sport, particularly football.

In a sport where women seemingly weren’t allowed to participate, the rise of inclusivity has led to the success viewers can now see on their screens today.

But not all campaigns for the Women’s World Cup took such a sentimental and emotional approach.

With the new integration of CGI (computer generated imagery) and VFX (visual effects), agencies are able to transcend the boundaries of traditional video advertising and bring a new light to women’s football.

Here are two examples of campaigns that successfully brought technology into their campaigns:

Orange: La Compil des Bleues

Perhaps one of the most memorable campaigns to surface from this year came from Orange, France’s sponsor, created by the agency Marcel.

The video shows a compilation of the French men’s team highlights. This includes incredible goals and skills, as well as highly successful teamwork. The clip is not all that it seems, however, as the video is interrupted to show the use of CGI…

The videos were clips of the women’s team, with famous male players being superimposed over the top.

The men’s team already generates significant excitement and attention, captivating a large audience. The campaign brings a new light to women’s football to hopefully generate the same response.

Their message only seems to confirm this: “At Orange, when we support les Bleus, we support les Bleues.”

The magazine Marketing-Beat reiterates the positive attention that this campaign received, with some referring to it as the ‘best sports advert ever’. Marketing-Beat explains that in a study conducted by the University of Zurich, football performances were judged at a similar level when the gender was unknown, but when the gender was revealed, men’s football seemed to score significantly higher.

Orange demonstrates just how talented the women’s team is, with their campaign aiming to deconstruct the disparity between the men’s and the women’s teams.

ITV: The Pride Has Arrived

France was not the only country to utilise special effects to promote the Women’s World Cup. ITV showed support for the England team with their #ThePrideHasArrived campaign.

ITV cleverly used CGI to support the England team, the Lionesses, by including their own lioness in the advert.

The lioness seen in the video was real, filmed against a green screen in South Africa, with CGI then transporting her to everyday life.

The campaign took a slightly different approach to both Hyundai and Orange, in which it did not focus on trying to highlight the importance of women’s participation in football compared to men. ITV’s campaign was simply to generate excitement for the tournament and show national support, cleverly intertwined with the presence of England flags in the background of various shots.

Despite the different approach, ITV’s campaign still proved to be successful, though not all of the comments were deemed as positive as the other two campaigns.

Comments on YouTube are mostly positive, However, a few took to the platform to express their dissatisfaction.

One fan stated: ‘No way as exciting as the men’s. And I am a lady before I get shouted at. Football was a man’s game’

Another wrote a rather scathing review: ‘Women's world cup will never be the same as men's world cup… How can female soccer players whine about ‘equal pay’, when women's world cup generates a tiny fraction of the revenues produced by men's world cup? not even feminists/liberals care about watching women's world cup, this explains why tv ratings for women's world cup are so low.’

Whilst the comments were not all positive, the campaign itself proved to be successful, generating a lot of support for the Lionesses.

What’s the future of Women’s World Cup campaigns?

Special effects and CGI certainly seem to be successful in marketing campaigns and, given the success of campaigns for the Women’s World Cup, are definitely the way to go in future campaigns.

These trends could play a pivotal role:

1.  AI and CGI

AI (artificial intelligence) is widely discussed in the media, and there is a potential that AI could be used to generate more marketing ideas and campaigns. CGI could work in tandem with ideas generated by AI and then finessed by the creative team.

This could allow for the merging of technology and people to create innovative ads, just as we saw with the Orange and ITV campaigns. Startup evaluates the pros and cons of AI in the marketing sphere.

2. Metaverse events

The metaverse is a growing phenomenon. Meta defines the metaverse as ‘a set of digital spaces to socialise, learn, play and more.’ It’s an online platform that allows people to connect and take part in digital events.

Upland decided to partner with FIFA to create an event supporting the Women’s World Cup, allowing fans to gather and communicate with each other, generating support and bringing together a community.

This innovative new technology is ideal for modern marketing campaigns and strategies as it allows for an interactive approach to advertising, helping fans to interact with one another and potentially to interact with the brand or ambassadors. It also allows brands to create a sense of exclusivity as the metaverse is only open to those who have signed up and not as widely available as TV or social media channels.

The metaverse is still a fairly new concept and so there are an unlimited amount of directions a creative team could go in to advertise their brand in this way.

3. Using what already works

Not every campaign has to engage in new technological advances as it may not always fit the message of their campaign.

Hyundai’s World Cup campaign, for example, did not need CGI to portray an already real story. Using traditional marketing strategies can also be just as successful.

Agencies often focus on metrics and the success of previous campaigns to help inform their next decision. If a campaign has been received extremely well, it is likely that a future campaign may use similar strategies to gain the same reaction.

The future of marketing campaigns, as shown through the success of the Women’s World Cup campaigns, may not stick to just one route. Instead, they’ll use all the tools available to really score with their consumers!

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This piece was written by one of the students on 2023’s Sookio Bootcamp, a week of remote work experience for aspiring marketers. Take a look at brilliant posts from Bootcamp alumni on campaigns from Nike LDNR, BBC Tokyo Olympics and Google.