The Big Picture – Rakuten & Barcelona

With the 2020-21 La Liga season played behind closed doors, Barcelona shirt sponsor Rakuten engaged fans by asking them to submit images to a photomosaic displayed at the entrance of the Camp Nou.

Territory: Global/Spain

Agency: N/A

Objectives

‘The Big Picture’ was aimed at engaging fans during the pandemic and encouraging them to sign up for Rakuten IDs, which give access across the ecommerce giants Rakuten services via a single log-in.

Activation

On 20 July 2020, Rakuten and Barcelona invited fans to upload photos of themselves cheering for the club.

Photos were submitted via a dedicated website that required a Rakuten ID to log in. A total of 46,000 pictures were put together into a mosaic also starring Barca players Lionel Messi, Gerard Piqué, Frenkie De Jong, Marc-André Ter Stegen and Antoine Griezmann. The finished product was unveiled on 2 October 2020.

Through a link sent to each contributor, fans were able to access a personalised video locating their photo on the montage. For those who were able to visit the stadium, Rakuten also offered an interactive augmented reality system, using which fans were able to find their picture in the mosaic by scanning a QR code.

Outcome

The activation generated the following metrics:

  • 1 million total earned media reach
  • 168 news clippings
  • entries from 159 countries
  • 771,907 video views
  • 822,142 engagements