Rebooting the Beautiful Game

Client: Cif

What began as a bog-standard awareness brief for multi-purpose cleaning brand Cif, swiftly transformed into a mission with purpose. Faced with the challenge, W refused to play it safe – ripping up the script to create something truly game-changing.

W took a brand best known for shiny surfaces and used it to shine a light on a deeper issue – turning ‘opportunities to see’ into real-life ‘opportunities to play’. We harnessed the raw, unifying power of football and the rise of an authentic professional footballer in Cole Palmer to deliver something far greater than a campaign: a movement that captured headlines and hearts, informed by research that showed that 10% of young football players had dropped out of the sport since COVID due to financial strain and that 27% of UK families felt unable to afford sports equipment for their children. Our Re-kicks campaign underlined Cif’s cleaning power in a way that resonated not just with millennials, but with a much bigger, much more engaged audience of football fans, families and everyone in between – demonstrating its power to clean football boots. As a result, it got 2,500+ kids back on the pitch with confidence, 22 professional clubs and more than 200,000 football fans engaged during match days, and delivered media reach of more than 20 million – giving thousands of of disadvantaged children the chance to reclaim the pitch and put Cif at the top of the league as a force for good.