In 2014, Maurice Lacroix and FC Barcelona signed a partnership agreement by which Maurice Lacroix became the official watch partner of the soccer club. This partnership allows Maurice Lacroix to gain brand awareness around the world thanks to FC Barcelona's global fan base; while FC Barcelona is associated with a luxury brand that has a strong digital marketing expertise.
In 2015, year two of the partnership, Maurice Lacroix had three objectives:
1. Build global brand awareness of Maurice Lacroix, leveraging on the FC Barcelona partnership
2. Increase brand engagement through amplification on social media platforms
3. Generate purchase interest for Maurice Lacroix watches
This was achieved by the campaign described below.
The campaign comprised three phases: the handover event, the design of the Pontos S Extreme watches by the FC Barcelona players and the invitation to fans to design their own watch. The three phases were activated online across social platforms with the aim to generate awareness and amplify the campaign thanks to user generated content.
The Campaign:
1. Watch handover to the FC Barcelona team
To promote the Pontos S collection and trigger interest among FC Barcelona fans, Maurice Lacroix released a movie where a super-agent hands over Ponto S timepieces to the entire FC Barcelona team. Leaving the Maurice Lacroix headquarters in Switzerland, her challenging operation starts by motorbike, continues by plane, helicopter and even requires her to sky-dive over the city of Barcelona to land near the FCB Training Facility and completes her task just in time.
2. Pieces designed by each player of the FCB
One month after the release of the video, FCB players were given the chance to demonstrate their creative skills off the field by designing a personalized timepiece. One-on-one design sessions were organized in a custom-made Maurice Lacroix design studio installed within the FC Barcelona facilities. A film as well as images of the players designing their own watches were used to encourage Maurice Lacroix and FC Barcelona fans to follow the players' lead and create their own designs online.
3. Unique fan's watches
To start the conversation with the community, Maurice Lacroix and FC Barcelona fans were invited to design their own model online via a micro-site. Fans could share their design on social media and enter a competition to win the watch they had designed. The most shared designs were then selected and 5 participants received their own personalized watch they had designed.
Cross platform digital activation:
Digital Luxury Group (DLG) successfully coordinated the online actions of Maurice Lacroix and FC Barcelona, and managed to maximize the reach of the campaign while keeping engagement high.
The campaign was successfully activated across Maurice Lacroix's social platforms: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WeChat and Sina Weibo.
On top of the activation on Maurice Lacroix's social media, DLG went a step further and negotiated with FC Barcelona to be able to not only post on their Facebook page directly but also to invest budget in boosting the post on their page. By establishing visibility directly on FC Barcelona's platforms, the campaign's reach was multiplied exponentially.
Concretely, two posts were shared on the FC Barcelona' page, one during the handover event phase and a second showing the players designing the watches and inviting fans to design theirs same online.
One of the Maurice Lacroix boosted posts on FC Barcelona's page had such a high engagement rate that it broke a record by any other Swiss watchmaker's Facebook communications. This showed the perfect alignment between the two brands, the common values they share and the high engagement of FC Barcelona fans towards Maurice Lacroix's watches.
The activation cleverly combined posting from Maurice Lacroix and FC Barcelona accounts and generated outstanding results in terms of brand, partnership and campaign awareness.
1. Awareness of the partnership was massively raise with 8.9 million views of the handover movie and a 41% increase in visits to the Maurice Lacroix / FCB partnership page on MauriceLacroix's website
2. An exceptional engagement rate on Maurice Lacroix's Facebook page (3.45% on average), over 9,000 watches designed by fans via the micro-site, and over 11,000 new fans on Maurice Lacroix's social media platforms.
3. Finally, the campaign generated purchase intent with hundreds of price requests from fans looking to purchase the watch they had designed, while also generating a significant amount of store locations requests, both metrics signifying a strong interest to buy.
