Objective

The campaign aims to:

• Increase brand awareness and promote the unique, limited edition Messi burger - Champions edition
• Appeal to a younger/newer audience by tapping into the popularity of Soccer/Football during the FIFA World Cup (particularly following Argentina’s win and Messi’s rise to even greater fame)
• Bringing people from different continents/countries together to celebrate the game with a shared love for Hard Rock, Lionel Messi, and Soccer
• Boost our digital profiles in terms of both reach and engagement
• Expand our audience not only across food and music but also through pop culture and sports

Strategy

Plan of Action:

We created a new offering, Messi 2.0 Merch, and the Messi Burger: Champions edition was launched just before the FIFA world cup began. We used the popularity of the game and Messi himself to get people’s attention on social platforms.

Key Features:

• Arranged a new photoshoot, with younger, more diverse models to represent and showcase the new merch.
• Did a fun, soccer-focused shoot for the LTO - Messi Burger: Champions Edition.
• Created content and opportunities for audiences to take part and win during Argentina matches to push our offering even further. This resulted in high engagement and reach for the brand as well as an increase in footfall to local cafes.
• Introduced unique AR filters on the Messi merch, introducing another USP for audiences to invest in. This was launched with the help of several sports/soccer influencers, who teased and showcased the merch on their own social media channels. 
• Paid social was used to target previous visitors to the website and previous audiences that engaged with Messi content to encourage sales of the new merch. This resulted in the Messi merch being sold out in several cafes and online shop.
• We also did 2 collaboration posts and 1 story with Lionel Messi himself throughout the year to establish his affiliation with Hard Rock Cafe. These worked extremely well with over 42M users reached and more than 4.7M engagements.
• A post congratulating Lionel Messi on his win on social media also helped to nicely round up the campaign towards the end.
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Challenges:

• Breaking away from the traditional topics of food and music and branching into the Soccer niche was a challenge for Hard Rock Cafe as a brand, but this whole campaign was introduced to reinvent the brand and appeal to a wider and younger audience.
• Creating content for the FIFA World Cup, particularly around Argentina’s matches, without knowing the outcomes of them was particularly challenging. However, these posts worked really well in terms of engagement, as they allowed our followers to show their support and love for Messi.
• Finding soccer influencers who were open to working and showing their support for Messi was also challenging at times, particularly finding influencers that were happy to share the AR filter on the merch in the best possible light.

Results

We measured campaign success based on the reach and engagement on our social media posts and how well our paid campaigns worked to push sales online. The results were as follows:

• The total reach and engagement of the Champions Burger and Messi Merch posts alone were 2.1M and 1.2M respectively. 
• Total profile Reach during this period was 10M, with Facebook and Instagram combined.
• Through our social channels (Facebook and Instagram), total traffic to the Rock Shop increased by 110%, with a total of 10K sessions.
• The Messi merch sold out completely online and in our Rock Shops in the first week of December.
• Our Instagram page saw a 30% increase in reach, a 633.6% increase in profile visits, and a 19.76% in traffic to the Rock Shop website compared to the previous period.
• Our Facebook page saw a 170% increase in reach, 290% in profile visits, and a 150% increase in traffic to the Rock Shop website compared to previous periods.
• Total link clicks increased by 150% compared to the previous quarter as a result of this campaign.
• The total engagement received from Influencer posts was 9.2k and views were 5.5k.

Media