To celebrate their 100th season, the NFL wanted to do something special in Canada. Because it may be an American game, but there are millions of NFL fans north of the border.
Our solution: the Fantennial Challenge. Starting with three kickoff events in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, we launched a season-long contest to identify the 32 biggest superfans in Canada (one for each NFL team). The Challenge lived on a website and on the league’s social channels.
Every week you could earn points by responding to a new email challenge, like pre-game speeches, touchdown dances or carving your team’s logo into a pumpkin for Halloween. We asked Canadian fans to step up and thousands of them delivered, posting their entries on Instagram and Twitter. The response we got was huge, heartwarming and often hilarious.
By season’s end we had our 32 superfans and one grand prize winner (and he had two tickets to the Super Bowl in Miami). We also had some amazing UGC, which we showcased in a campaign to get more Canadians watching the playoffs. Our home-grown creative was an Instagram hit, out-performing NFL commercials from south of the border.