Stephanie Herbst and Marina Lunn, senior project managers at global experiential marketing agency TRO, share their insights on creating ‘fan-first’ brand activations for the 2024 UEFA Champions League final in London.
Working with PepsiCo and Just Eat Takeaway, and collaborating with fellow Omnicom agency Fuse, TRO brought to life the fan activations at London’s Trafalgar Square and Potters Field.
What was the aim of the activations?
ML: “For Pepsi, the aim was to create a lot of fun engagement across different sites. Pepsi’s broad messaging focused on celebrating football in every form, both on and off the pitch. One of Pepsi’s goals was to ensure infrastructure was in place to encourage people to reuse and recycle, providing a bit of fun and rewards for doing so.”
SH: “For Just Eat, the main objective was to bring the football community and fans together by delivering an activation that enabled and facilitated enthusiasm. For Just Eat Takeaway, it needed to be engaging, PR-able, fun and bring joy. It also needed to bring fans closer to the brand, which is something only experiential events can do.”
Have you worked on similar projects in the past? Did you do anything differently this time?
ML: “We’ve worked with Just Eat for the last three years on similar projects with UEFA. However, this year, we worked closely with Pepsi’s design team. We didn’t do anything necessarily different, but we’ve been learning and adapting how we work with clients, especially with UEFA’s tight timelines.”
SH: “For this project, we followed a ‘fans first’ ethos and ensured whatever we did, put the fans at the centre of the action by encouraging participation, rather than spectatorship. The activation was based in London, so it was easier to deliver from a supplier point of view as we had pre-existing relationships. We had a good understanding of the infrastructure within London so we knew the limitations of working in the space. We could also use our own trusted staffing team who had great brand activation experience.”
What were the main challenges?
ML: “Balancing the needs of major stakeholders like UEFA and the brands is always challenging. For us, build times are particularly tough, especially in locations like Trafalgar Square, which has a very short build window and is a protected site. There are many behind-the-scenes elements and several councils involved, requiring careful coordination.”
SH: “One of the biggest challenges was coordinating the teams based on their accessibility to different parts of the site. From a fan festival perspective, we had to be conscious of the guidelines set by the Greater London Authority around promoting fast food, ensuring we devised engaging activities that conveyed Just Eat messaging in the right way.
“Another major challenge was the classic British weather. To ensure the activation could proceed rain or shine, we added a roof to the setup. This proved to be beneficial not just for the occasional drizzle, but also for the intense heat during the event.”
When managing your team on-site, how did you split this between production, staffing, workshop, logistics and operations?
ML: “We aim for efficiency across crews and sites. For Pepsi, we had two project managers splitting responsibilities between Trafalgar Square and Potters Field. We collaborated with their teams to manage staffing. We had 35 staff across the two sites and around 40 crew members involved in the build. Some stayed for live events, while others helped with setup and breakdown. Behind the scenes, we have additional staff handling logistics and studio work.”
SH: “We had five members of staff in charge of the Just Eat grabber who were qualified to harness up members of the public and trained in engineering to step in for mechanical problems that may have arisen.
“We also had eight promotional staff (including an event manager), who were all stationed at different parts of the customer journey. They were responsible for ensuring the waivers were signed, queuing was managed, photobooth/voiceovers were run smoothly and handing out prizes and vouchers.
“Within TRO, we worked closely with our production department to ensure we could take a preexisting activity and transform it into something more bespoke for Just Eat Takeaway. The TRO creative team did a great job in identifying ways in which we could elevate the campaign by adding small touchpoints which made the fan experience more personalised, including the photobooth.”
What were your key learnings from this event?
ML: “One key learning is that simple things can go a long way in fan zones. The reuse reward vending machines were a simple yet effective activity that worked well in collaboration with concessions. We’re discussing with Pepsi about reusing some of the kit built for this event, which is beneficial for both sustainability and continuity.”
How much creative license were you given by the clients?
ML: “We worked closely with Pepsi’s design studio, which handles a lot of their creative work in-house. For Pepsi Pulse Ball, we came up with the concept and delivered it visually. For mixology and reuse and reward, we worked with existing concepts and brought them to life. It was a collaborative effort with Pepsi’s design team and there was a real sense of teamwork and support throughout the project.”
SH: “We’ve got a longstanding relationship with Just Eat, and so with that level of trust and partnership built up, we were certainly able to test out a range of creative routes.”
Do you have any upcoming projects this summer?
ML: “We definitely have a busy summer ahead. Goodwood Festival of Speed is a really big event for us, we’ll be at some music festivals including Wireless, alongside some year-round programmes with other clients. So, there’s certainly plenty going on.”
