Lowe scores with global football fans

Lowe Sydney is behind a viral campaign to promote the upcoming Fifa World Cup qualifying series in Australia.

In less than a week, a clip promoting the Uzbekistan game on April 1 has caught worldwide attention online. It has become the fifth most-viewed sports clip in the world on YouTube and has already accumulated 350,000 hits in total to date.

Due to a widespread belief in Australia that the Socceroos are sure to qualify, Lowe and FFA have adopted an unorthodox strategy: to promote the opposition as fierce adversaries capable of knocking Australia out.

The campaign kicked off with a highly authentic looking Uzbeki training film seeded online last week. This featured the team being subjected to extreme and uncompromising training methods in a bid to up the ante against Australia.

Lowe Sydney executive creative director, Dave Johnson said: “The footage is loaded with contradictory cues that make the skills, on the one hand, feel highly credible, and on the other,  feel quite incredible. The result is very engaging: it’s prompted huge amounts of commentary and given the films real viral traction.”

The training footage has now been commandeered for a national TV push to directly promote sales to the game on the premise: Qualification Just Got Harder. The campaign will evolve, with follow up activity around the later qualifying clashes with Bahrain and Japan.

Client: FFA

Sound: Simon Lister (Nylon)