GLOBAL: A campaign created by FP7/CAIRO for soft drinks brand Coca-Cola around the African Cup of Nations has won the Grand Prix in the Effective Content Strategy category in the 2018 WARC Awards.

This category rewards branded content strategies that can demonstrate a business outcome.

For Coke in Egypt, this involved a rethinking of its approach to football at a time when rival Pepsi was the official sponsor of the African Cup of Nations tournament and when Egyptian fans were losing interest in the national team following a ban on live attendances.

With Hijacking the African Cup, Coke set out to reignite Egyptians’ passionate support for their team, offering to replace their non-Egyptian jerseys with Egyptian ones and reminding them in song of the star players in the current team.

Coca-Cola content shares outnumbered rival Pepsi by more than 2:1, football association went up by 10% and brand love grew by 5 points in just a month.

“Saliency is so important to Coke and that’s what they achieved – mental presence,” said Nick Kendall, Founding Partner of media broker Electric Glue and one of the judges.

“They placed themselves on the fans’ side and, most importantly, in their songs and therefore in their hearts.”

In addition to the Grand Prix, the 16-strong judging panel led by John Dokes, Global Chief Marketing Officer and General Manager, AccuWeather Network, awarded a total of four Golds, four Silvers and four Bronzes, as well as three Special Awards.

The full list of winning papers can be read on the WARC Awards site.

Coca-Cola’s campaign also won the Best Multiplatform Award – for a content strategy that has successfully used a range of different comms channels.

The Long-Term Idea Award, for a content strategy that has delivered sustained success for a brand, went to a campaign by J Walter Thompson for STC, the Saudi Telecom Company. Unveil Saudi used a team of photographers to capture never-before-seen content to be used across social media assets, OOH advertising, and TVCs while reassuring customers about the quality of the network.

The Smart Spender Award for a content strategy that was effective on a budget of $500K or less was won by a campaign by TBWA\RAAD for Connect, a Lebanese ISP. Slow Trends satirised the slow connect speeds in Lebanon and more than trebled Connect’s sales and market share.

Sourced from WARC