In November 2022, Cymru — the Welsh national football team — flew out to Qatar to compete in the FIFA World Cup finals. The first time in 64 years that our nation had participated in the world’s biggest sporting event.

This was a big deal for our country. The global audience of 5 billion people presented us with a unique opportunity to showcase Wales to the world, and create a legacy.

With Wales last to qualify, timescales were tight. We needed to work at speed on comparatively modest budgets, and the political controversy surrounding Qatar’s hosting of the tournament meant we needed a pitch-perfect campaign.

The Welsh Government’s brief was to take Wales to the world:
• to introduce our country, often for the very first time, to new international audiences;
• to reignite the hiraeth (longing for home) of our worldwide diaspora; and
• to create a legacy on which to build further international promotion of our nation.

We were tasked with:
• developing and delivering a multilingual integrated campaign that showcased our progressive, values-driven nation to the world.
• and doing so through an innovative collective of partners that could amplify Wales’ stories beyond what could have been done alone by Government.

We had varied audiences with different levels of awareness of Wales, multiple territories and languages to consider, and dozens of stakeholders and partners that needed to buy-in to the campaign, in order to amplify our messages. So, we needed a strategy that could pull our nation’s stories and people together and present them in a compelling way.

Our aim was to craft an insights-led strategy and content solution that would cut through noisy media landscapes. A creative approach that was single-minded to create consistency, yet flexible enough to be delivered through many executions, and by various partners and channels.

CREATIVE APPROACH
‘This is Wales, C’mon in’ — our authentic, people-led campaign introduced Wales and invited the world in to get to know us better. It communicated Wales’ brand proposition and embodied the nation’s values.

The people of Wales became our messengers — telling our stories, championing our values, culture and traditions in an engaging, unscripted and authentically Welsh way.

The creative execution saw us craft individual scenes of Wales that could come together in different ways to tell bigger stories — creating a vast suite of multilingual content that allowed bespoke audience journeys pre, during and post tournament.

An adaptive slogan: ‘This is Wales’ was paired with a friendly CTA which changed, depending on the stage of the campaign and the audience.

A suite of hero films took audiences on a journey — deepening their understanding of our country and values with every step. From a pre-tournament ‘croeso’ (welcome), to a broader showcase of our nation and values, and onto supporting stories, hub and hygiene content.

CONTENT STRATEGY
A modular approach to content creation — filming, photography and copywriting — gave us assets for multiple audiences in multiple formats and languages. An exciting new graphic language brought energy to the campaign — using a bespoke typeface, bold colour palette, dynamic animations and soundscape that blended real sounds of Wales with a re-imagined take on a centuries old folk tune.

— Hero content
A suite of hero adverts (full length and shorter cutdowns) took audiences on a journey — deepening their understanding of our country with every step. From a pre-tournament ‘croeso’ (welcome) to a broader showcase of our nation and values, and then an invitation to join us in our football-focused celebration.

— Hub Content
Supporting stories were crafted for owned channels and media packs, including stories of LGBTQ+ fans, Welsh supporters’ global charity work, and an inclusive club that helped locals and refugees through difficult times.

— Hygiene Content
With high search interest for Wales, we planned user content for Wales.com and reacted to live social trends to place relevant content on owned channels (social and web).