As part of The Drum's Best of 2021 series, their journalists have been picking out their favourite award-winning work of the year.
Throughout the festive season, they looked back through the winners from their 2021 global awards program, which includes The Drum Awards for Marketing, The Drum Awards for the Digital Industries, The Drum Awards for B2B and more.
Here, they round-up some of the best campaigns to win in The Drum Awards’ sports categories, including our work for Budweiser.
In 2020, Lionel Messi was on the verge of breaking Pele’s 46-year-old record of scoring 643 goals for a single club. Budweiser wanted to raise awareness of its association with Messi, owning the 644 moment by creating a spike in conversation – all while keeping its product at its heart.
So COPA90 flipped the script, focusing instead on the 160 goalkeepers Messi had scored against and their part in pushing him to greatness.
Budweiser produced a bottle for every one of Messi’s 644 goals, each personalised for one of the 160 keepers it was scored against, with the goal number they represented and a revamped version of the Budweiser creed including a special tribute to the qualities that have characterised Messi’s career.
The campaign won the travel, leisure or sports categories at both The Drum Awards for Social Media and The Drum Awards for Content.
This article originally appeared here.