Where can I get this t-shirt?
It was clear that we would not reach football-crazy teenagers with a classic advertising campaign for the 2012 European Championship. We had to give these young people something to believe in; something that lives up to their desire to experience how the German national team once again prevails in an international tournament.
With Hungry German Youth we didn't start a campaign, we started a movement. The focus was not on an elaborate TV commercial, but on a simple T-shirt. Before the tournament, we gave all Nike players on the team these t-shirts so they could wear them during the tournament. We then have pictures of the players on the Facebook pages of the players. Football stars in our t-shirt shared with millions of fans. And when Facebook users started asking about the T-shirt, we distributed them for free at a number of events in limited numbers.
At the beginning of the group phase, we conquered the streets of Germany - flooding the streets with thousands of Hungry German Youth posters after each game. On a website we published a digital lookbook that was fully linked to Twitter and Facebook and contained pictures and films of our Nike athletes. On Facebook alone, Hungry German Youth content was published on over 40 million chronicles and we generated over 100 million earned media. "Where can I get this t-shirt?" Was the most frequently asked question by German fans during the 2012 European Championship. When the Hungry German Youth t-shirt finally hit stores nationwide before the quarter-finals, it was sold out within a week.
