Fans do not always need another reward, experience or piece of merchandise. Sometimes the most powerful thing a brand can offer is recognition. Notice how the community behaves, what it sacrifices, where it contradicts itself and just how ridiculous its devotion can become. Reflect those truths accurately and the reaction is immediate: “That is us—and somebody has finally noticed.”
- Quantify the Emotion
- Dramatise the Sacrifice
- Reveal the Shared Mental Shortcut
- Satirise the Contradiction
- Represent the Community’s Distinctive Codes
- Aggregate the Collective Footprint
- Celebrate Extraordinary Devotion
- Expose the Unglamorous Truth
1. Quantify the Emotion
Measure an invisible fan response and turn it into visible evidence of the community’s contribution.
The Belgian Heartbeat — Proximus, FamousGrey, 2021
Football coverage measures almost everything players do, while the emotional exertion of supporters remains largely invisible. Proximus equipped Belgian fans with devices that tracked heart rate, movement and noise during matches. The results became supporter statistics linked to live match events and broadcast on national television. By giving fandom its own performance data, the campaign showed supporters that their excitement, tension and physical commitment were not merely reactions to the game. They were measurable parts of the spectacle.
2. Dramatise the Sacrifice
Show the compromises fans willingly make to remain part of the experience.
Everything Can Wait — SuperSport × CANAL+, BETC Paris/Havas Johannesburg, 2026
With World Cup matches taking place across North American time zones, many African supporters face nights organised around football rather than sleep. SuperSport and CANAL+ reflected that sacrifice through a continent seemingly placed on pause: offices, markets, streets and ordinary routines surrendered to late-night viewing. The film did not need to describe African supporters as passionate. It showed what their passion costs them—and allowed millions of people making the same private compromise to recognise themselves as part of something collective.
3. Reveal the Shared Mental Shortcut
Use unprompted audience responses to expose what the community instinctively associates with the category.
Draw Ketchup — Heinz, Rethink, 2021
People across five continents were anonymously asked to draw ketchup. Again and again, they produced something resembling a Heinz bottle, often reproducing its label, shape and visual codes without being shown the brand. Heinz then turned selected drawings into packaging and advertising. The campaign did not announce that Heinz was synonymous with ketchup. It allowed thousands of independent responses to reveal that collective association. Consumers were shown the picture already living in their heads—and the brand’s fame became demonstrable rather than self-declared.
4. Satirise the Contradiction
Reflect the hypocrisy, inconsistency or selective logic that members of the fandom recognise in themselves.
Football. You Gotta Love It. — Paddy Power, BBH, 2023
Football supporters often condemn billionaire owners, questionable money and the commercial corruption of the sport—until the investment benefits their own club. Paddy Power dramatised that contradiction through supporters rapidly abandoning their principles when a fictional oil baron arrived bearing money and ambition. The joke worked because the campaign was not an outsider sneering at football culture. It articulated an uncomfortable truth supporters had already noticed in themselves: moral outrage and competitive desire can coexist remarkably happily.
