PepsiCo crisps brand Lays launched a late May digital South African strand of its ongoing ‘Knock Knock’ UEFA Champions League campaign with creative fronted by former Leeds United FC and national team legend Lucas Radebe.
The former centre back – who notched up 70 caps for South Africa, 201 for Leeds and 113 for Kaiser Chiefs – stars in vibrant creative targeting a diverse, multi-racial South African audience.
Created in harness with agency ROBOT and helmed by Director Paul Ramaema, the work dropped from 19 May and aimed to generate hype around the Champions League Final (which kicks off on 10 June in the Atatürk Olympic Stadium in Istanbul) and build buzz around the brand by positioning Lays as a sports watching snack.
ROBOT was tasked with adapting the global campaign’s conceptual idea and storyline to the South African market with a local, football-linked celebrity and leaned in to local nuances to make the creative ‘relatable, engaging and fun’. The team’s solution was to include local styles of greeting and vernacular in the spots and giving them more energy and pace revolving around exaggerated performances.
The marketers, who shot the video footage in four different homes in which packets of Lays were planted, concealed the identity of the celebrity guests to ensure authentic surprised and delighted home owner reactions on the arrival of the ‘un-expecting guests for the game’.
The ROBOT team included Director Paul Ramaema, Executive Producer Liam Johnson and Producer Godfrey Matsika.
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This local activation is part of a global ‘No Lays, No Game’ initiative activating the brand’s rights as an official sponsor of the UEFA Champions League 2023.
This latest campaign phase follows on a French version featuring Thierry Henry and a multi-market anchor wave of work fronted by Argentina skipper Lionel Messi.
The South African campaign ran alongside a local iteration of Lays ongoing UCL ‘RePlay’ activation: a community football pitch project which saw sustainable soccer fields built by the brand in South Africa.
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