Communication is our inspiration

The hate does not play on this field

Story

The Football Federation of Macedonia is an association working on the developent of amateur and professional footbal in partnership with FIFA and UEFA. Due to high ethnic diversity of its football players, FFM quickly became aware of the rising problem of intolerance in the stands. With repreating hate crime incidents among the supporters, FFM wanted to draw the media’s attention to the problem.

Challenge

Our main challenge was to find an appropriate angle of communicating a universal (key) message of the campaign to a vast range of people. This entailed a versatile approach that could easily reach the stands.

Solution

We created an integrated awareness campaing against the intolerance that included a series of TV and print ads. Each one sent a very clear message highlighting the importance of tolerance during the games, a key principle of the association. With a very simple, yet formative message The hate does not play on this field, the campaign included nationally iconic male and female players.

Anticipated results

By the end of its production the goal of this integrated national campaign was to:
Contribute towards the acceptance of multi-ethnic character of the society and rejection of all prejudices.
Increased public awareness – particularly among sports fans and youth – on the detrimental effects of hate speech and hate crime in sport.
Encourage sports fans to avoid discriminatory, racist, and bigoted slurs on and off the football fields, including on social media.
Illustrate how sportsmanship and fair play by fans can bring a positive change for their team, supporters’ groups and the quality of the football game.

Production in a nutshell