The world's largest ever study of football fans
It's fair to say that in 2012, Sharp Electronics was struggling to regain a foothold in Europe. So, they signed up as a major sponsor of the European Football Champions.
As a 100-year-old Japanese innovation brand – and a bit of an outsider – I thought they should take a more “scientific” look at the people’s game. So, while the other sponsors focused on the 320 competing players, we turned our attention towards the 350 million fans.
Arguably, what happens off the pitch during a major tournament can be as interesting as what happens on it. The shared excitement and frustration can help bring out a country's true colours - while the mood of a nation can shift with a single kick.
Sharp FanLabs was the largest ever study of football fans. The integrated campaign ran for three months in the lead up to the tournament. Across 30 different European markets, the extensive program featured both digital and local activations – all of which helped power our up-to-the-minute contextual advertising.
First we needed to study football fans.
We wanted to find out their level of optimism, pride and commitment – and track how this changed over the tournament. We teamed up with a research company to build a custom app. We also ran a series of online tests and daily polls, while our physical FanLabs were on the ground in major cities around Europe.
We analysed these results on a national and individual level. Test subjects could find out their fan archetype and see how they compared with friends, the rest of their country and the rest of Europe.
The most cutting-edge research was done by our mobile FanLabs, which travelled Europe screening the tournament on a Sharp HDTV. Part living room and part laboratory, the vehicles were also kitted out with brainwave scanning headsets and other biometric sensors. During every match, we analysed 11 fans from each team. The technology allowed us to monitor their physiological reaction to see how their emotional state changed throughout the 90-minutes.
How nervous were they beforehand? Which fans never gave up hope? Who concentrated the hardest? And who was just happy to be there?
All this gave us a wealth of data to play with. So it was over to our dedicated editorial team. Each day, they analysed the results for the most relevant and interesting findings, which we shared on our website and across social media.
These findings also powered our contextual advertising across 30 markets. In addition, each local market had their own media partnerships. In the UK, Sharp FanLabs sponsored a pre-tournament supplement in the Sunday Telegraph and a daily segment on TalkSport where we also shared our latest greatest findings.
But more importantly, other publications also picked up our findings and reported them for us. Sharp FanLabs data appeared in more than 50 media publications across Europe, including goal.com and La Gazzetta Dello Sport.
In an age when every on-field kick is already being analysed, Sharp FanLabs found a completely unique way to connect with football fans.
Despite being new to the game, Sharp was able to outplay the other sponsors at Euro 2012. In total, over 3 million fans across Europe took part in the study, while over 300 million fans engaged with our result.
