FIFA: The World Cup Reimagined

Brief: Use FIFA's incredible archive of decades of legacy footage to create contemporary, multi-platform stories that engage a younger generation of football fans ahead of World Cup 2018.

Role: Creative lead from inception to completion, including art direction.

Deliverables: Over 125 pieces of content, including 23 hero YouTube documentaries, and platform optimised natives and originals across Facebook, Instagram, Instagram Stories and Twitter.

Note: This is an on-going project, so some of the content is in WIP form.

No one has the level of access and archive that FIFA have. But their reputation - amongst young fans in particular - is pretty toxic, and some of their platforms needed revitalising.

FIFA engaging us to tell the stories of World Cups past with our knowledge of audience, platforms and story-telling was an incredible opportunity. Everything we created was based on insights into audience appetite - the moments you've never heard of, re-imagining classic moments as if they'd happened today, telling the full story of a World Cup's cultural context in 90 seconds. The content varied wildly in execution but was all optimised for platforms and based on years of editorial insight.

We split the content into four phases, each of which was split down again into optimised natives that told the story in distinct ways across four platforms.

World Cup Moments Re-Imagined was my absolute favourite content - an excuse to do frankly barmy things with the FIFA archive, injecting personality and style through animation and creativity that would be more familiar to NBA fans than the FIFA audience. I am staggered that they let us do this.

Johan Cruyff and Dennis "Iceman" Bergkamp get the treatment.

Robin van Persie's header vs Spain given its logical conclusion of inter-galactic space flight.

The International Kicks That Changed The World phase sat at the opposite end of the spectrum, and told the stories of the biggest moments in World Cup history with the appropriate patience and reverence. We injected our flare for story-telling via carefully curated correspondents from relevant countries, subtle animation and tidy editing. This is the YouTube edit of our piece on Gazza's tears at Italia '90.

By engaging a mix of fans - young and old, from a broad cross-section of society - we told the story of Gazza's tears at Italia '90 in a way that would engage viewers too young to remember it and rekindle the emotion in fans who saw it first hand.

Untold World Cup Stories focused on the knowledge gap of the audience - the biggest stories never told. One for the football heads, no doubt, but it was aimed squarely at the curiosity gap in our audience, looking to serve the appetite for niche stories with which fans could regale their friends.

The moving story of Lilian Thuram's redemption at France '98, as the full-back recovered from a vital error to carry the host nation to the final.

What Made X So Y (e.g. What Made Italia so '90?) was a 1-minute time capsule, and aimed to tell the full cultural story of each World Cup in a rapid fire montage. These were brought to life by gorgeous animations by Joe Prytherch.

A compilation of intros I commissioned Joe Prytherch to create, that immediately set each World Cup in it's literal cultural context, full of tiny easter eggs for fans to enjoy. This is followed by an example comp, the "What Made USA So '94" film.