Finalist 2019: Esporte Clube Bahia – “Em nome do filho”

Objective and Context:

A football club that has been named as the most inclusive in Brazil, maybe in the world, according to “The Guardian” – biggest english newspaper – in November, Bahia has been trying to make social campaigns that go beyond just publicity and make concrete and effective results.

Our Father’s Day project is one of the most notable, because we’ve successfully changed around 100 children’s lives. We’ve noticed that, according to official data, about 5.5 million people in the country don’t have father’s name on their birth certificate. Therefore, our idea was to have a
paternity test stand, for free, at the club’s official store in front of our stadium, and to let people come to try to improve this statistic.

Creative Process:

First of all, our team wanted to do something for an important day for millions of people, but in a special way. We worked with the Public Defense of Bahia as the best way to reach the largest number of people. We reached the conclusion that a video could create emotion and promote reflection. As only having a mother is a cruel reality of our city, we had the idea of using a
boy that dreamt of having a father, in a poetic way.

After that, our plan was to use unsent letters to tell the story. The video was directed by Pis Santos, scripted by Pis Santos and Tiago César, and produced by Victor Cerqueira. The voiceover was made by Carolina Ribeiro. All of them are Bahia employees. In the cast, Matheus Lima, the little boy, was not a professional actor

Publication and Distribution:

The content was published one week before Father’s Day on all of Bahia’s social media: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Besides the main video, we published another piece showing the results. The hashtags used were #BBMP, #DiaDosPais and #NovoPai. We didn’t used conventional
mass media or TV.

Effect:

In the seven months prior to the campaign there had been 190 DNA exams done in the city of Salvador. In just five days after the campaign launched there were 90 tests in Bahia’s official store.
Besides that, there were 291 calls made to the juridical orientation for paternity registration.
There was wide coverage by local and national media, beyond the sports area as well (for example El País, Globo News, GloboEsporte.com).

Our numbers:

Twitter: 1.3M impressions, 1M views, 105K of total engagement;
Facebook: 625K of reach, 115K views, 12K of total engagement;
Instagram: 61K views, 17K likes, 1.3K comments;
YouTube: 11.5K views, 1.1K likes, 89 comments;

Football is a tool that can be used to accentuate what’s worse in society (racism, aggression, violence and intolerance) but can also be used in different ways – to spread culture, affection, sensibility, and human relations. So, we thought that clubs must choose if they’re going to be a
tool for love or hate.

We’ve chosen love. Besides that, we’re living in an era of daily media coverage, with more than 3 million followers on the club’s social media. And, because it’s football, we could reach people that probably wouldn’t comment or post about those cases if there were no participation of the clubs.

Links:

· Twitter (subtitled in English): https://twitter.com/ecbahia_en/status/1188851942220582912
· Twitter: https://twitter.com/ECBahia/status/1157640815704989696
· Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tv/B0s99mChje3/?igshid=fhok2ejcf1i
· YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0ZPNer-T5g
· Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=502881397133142