A Roger Federer fronted campaign from Italian multinational food company Barilla rolled out in August and saw the tennis legend surprise a rising star of the game whom he first met as a young fan five years previously during a US Open press conference that went viral.
The background to the campaign lies in an online PR session during the US Grand Slam tournament when a kid called Izyan Ahmad (known as Zisou) challenged Federer to keep playing until the youngster would be old enough to play against him. Federer, using the phrase ‘pinky promise’, gave him his word that he would do just that.
So five years later, the world’s largest pasta producer teamed up with agency Boomerang – part of Publicis Groupe – to set up a stunt surprise for Zisou in Zurich which it then turned into an online marketing campaign.
The setup saw Zizou, now a budding young tennis player, arrive for a match to find a series of surprises which climaxed with a game against 20-time Grand Slam winner Federer. The stunt was filmed and turned into a digital campaign called ‘The Promise with Roger Federer and Zizou’ which dropped across Barilla’s online platforms from 8 August.
The central video was supported by a set of edits and clips deployed across the brand’s own channels and on Federer’s personal platforms.
Comment
The ambassador alliance between Federer and Barilla might initially seem an unlikely brand endorser tie-up – after all, Barilla is a distinctly Italian brand primarily championing distinctly Italian products.
But it certainly seems to be working as this initiative not only tugs a little on the heartstrings, but also generated more than 5.5m views to date on the brand’s YouTube channel alone.
Indeed, this is the brand’s second time around in applying the ‘Federer-surprises-a-young-fan’ marketing format following on from its pandemic-related campaign which saw Federer surprise two Italian teens who had gone viral during the first Italian Covid-19 lockdown playing ‘Rooftop Tennis’.
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