Football has long been described as a religion and now it officially is one thanks to Foca Beer’s World Cup Brazilian ambush campaign.
Leveraging the host nation’s ‘Freedom of Religion’ statute, a May initiative saw Foca Beer hire a legal team to register soccer as an official religion in Brazil – thus enabling Brazilian fans to leave work in order to ‘observe their ‘beliefs’.
The campaign’s objective is to enable employees to relax and enjoy watching the World Cup without constantly being on the lookout for their line manager, or worrying that they might get in trouble with their boss for watching matches in working hours.
Working with agency Grey Brazil, Foca aimed to solve the problem by employing a lawyer to apply for religious status for football under the nation’s Freedom Of Religion Law – which enforces employers to allow their employees out of work commitments in order to observe their beliefs.
Grey’s creative team – led by Daniel Pérez Pallares, Federico Russi and Lucas Heck – has released on explanatory online promoting the campaign.
By trying to turn football into an officially registered religion and then sending official notices to employers via email
The campaigns drives football fans in Brazil to log into the campaign website, register their religious stats and click on which games they need to watch in order to ‘observe their religion’.
The site then sends an official email to each registered member’s boss informing them that the employee needs to take time off on the specific times/dates in order to pay his/her religious respects and to pray to football.
Comment
A sweet and simple piece of guerrilla work from this artisan microbrewer in Brazil, this World Cup work ambushes FIFA’s official beer partner Anheuser-Busch which is running both global and local campaigns around Brazil 2014 (see case study)
– this initiative shows a genuine understanding of fan challenges and aims to provide a solution.
It also reflects the widely held and often quoted ideas that football is the world’s religion and nowhere is this more true than in Brazil.
Links
Online TVC YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrHLocS-bZo
Foca Football Religion Website
http://www.futebolreligiao.com.br/
Foca YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgJUxLw1y6OOXd23WY4rCqg
Foca Facebook
