As part of its overall support for Volkswagen's partnership with the French Football Federation (FFF), SPORTFIVE has set up an innovative operation to make French team matches accessible to the visually impaired.
In this Success Story:
Challenge
In 2023, Volkswagen announced the extension of its partnership with the French Football Federation until 2026 as an electromobility partner, with the aim of highlighting its Volkswagen ID range of electric vehicles.
SPORTFIVE has developed a new signature for the partnership, "Passion is electric", symbolizing both the brand's new electric dimension and the fact that passion is an energy that is lived and transmitted!
It was in this context that Volkswagen approached us, with a desire to speak out on the subjects of inclusion and accessibility, and to develop an operation that would make passion accessible to as many people as possible!
Solution
If there's one place that symbolizes passion in soccer, it's stadiums, the iconic and emblematic venues of many clubs, and the playing fields of national teams in international matches... Yet for many people, access to stadiums remains an obstacle course, and they are poorly adapted to certain types of disability. This is particularly true for the visually impaired, 90% of whom say that stadiums are unsuited to their disabilities, whether in terms of physical accessibility or in terms of following the events taking place there.
With this in mind, Volkswagen and the FFF decided to take action on stadium accessibility for the visually impaired, a particularly relevant approach for the brand, which is the FFF's mobility partner. So SPORTFIVE presented a global operation in association with an innovative start-up company: Touch2See. The touchscreen tablet developed by this Toulouse-based company enables the visually impaired to follow matches thanks to a magnetic cursor which reproduces in real time the movements of the ball and the intensity of the action by connecting to the match's video feed. Volkswagen and the FFF have therefore made a commitment to Touch2see, co-financing in equal parts the production of 14 new-generation tablets, enabling the start-up to continue its development and a new kind of operation to see the light of day.
For all the matches of the men's and women's French teams in 2024, the brand is deploying an unprecedented system enabling 14 visually impaired people to :
Access to the stadium in 100% electric Volkswagen ID shuttles, when the stadium permits
Vibrate for the Bleu(e)s thanks to the Touch2See tablet, complementing the audio description system already set up by the FFF.
On February 23, 2024, the operation was launched at the France-Germany match for the French women's team. From this match onwards, and at every home match of the French Men's and Women's teams, 14 Touch2see tablets are deployed with Volkswagen ID shuttles, making it easier for 14 people to get to the stadium to follow and experience the matches with passion.
But beyond the implementation of this solution, SPORTFIVE has developed with Volkswagen a campaign to amplify and promote the device with several objectives:
To raise awareness of the operation among visually impaired people and their families, so that they can benefit from the solution at future matches.
Make this disability visible to the general public and promote the innovative solution developed by start-up Touch2See
Promote the joint commitment of Volkswagen and the FFF to making French national team matches accessible.
Special operation with SOPRESS
This global communication plan included several large-scale actions. For the launch of the operation, with the support of the SoPress media, we created a unique 2-sided poster:
An editorial side overprinted in Braille recounting the operation, its genesis and the commitments of Volkswagen and the FFF to the visually impaired.
An illustrated side showing French team players with the Touch2see tablet.
This was published in the April issue of SoFoot magazine, with a print run of over 40,000 copies, and distributed to over 200 journalists, some of whom were in the press box during the French men's team's match against Germany in Lyon on March 23. The operation with SoFoot also included a digital component, with the creation of an article retracing the operation in its entirety and relayed throughout the media's ecosystem.
Media Day with the French Women's Team
As a partner committed to the development of women's soccer, Volkswagen's initiative is implemented on an equal footing with the men's and women's teams. That's why we decided to take advantage of Media Day with the French national team players to promote the initiative.
We decided to introduce the Touch2see tablet to the general public and to the players in a new way, by challenging them to find their Bleues goals blindfolded, using only the tablet. A series of content designed to be "educational and benevolent" in order to promote the usefulness and benefits of this tablet for the visually impaired. A version of the content in audio description has also been developed to enable the visually impaired to enjoy the content.
Press Relations and Influence
Alongside this content, a comprehensive press relations and influence strategy was deployed. The press release accompanied by the collector poster sent out to the press generated a great deal of media coverage, including two reports on the M6 and France 5 TV channels during French national team matches. Finally, influencer Stadito was also able to discover and experiment with the tablet during the France-Chile match in Marseille, and create a series of content promoting the operation.
Summary of resources deployed:
Special press operation with SoFoot via the collector poster and the publication of a sponsored article on SoFoot.com
Production of boxed content on match days
Production of content as part of a media day with EDF Féminine
Press relations
Influence (Stadito)
Results
This operation was launched in 2024 and will continue until the end of the partnership between Volkswagen and the FFF.
+0
visually impaired people who have already benefited from the operation in 2024
+0M
views on content produced as part of the operation
0
journalistic reports produced by M6 and France 5 with a cumulative audience of over 3 million people
Jean-Manuel CAPARROS, Head of Communications at Volkswagen France: "We're very proud to roll out this unprecedented campaign, and to do so at a match that is particularly symbolic for our brand. This operation is a perfect illustration of the mission we have set ourselves with this partnership to make passion accessible to all, notably through mobility solutions.
Adrien BAILLEUL, Director Brand Services & Activation SPORTFIVE France: "At SPORTFIVE we are committed to creating programs that resonate deeply with the values of our brands and their audiences. With projects like Volkswagen Touch2See, we're proving that sports sponsorship can combine innovation and impact, for useful experiences rooted in fans' passions."
You want to find out more, contact us.
