Football fever swept the Middle East during Q4, but in the Dubai offices of Action Global Communications the competitive element of the World Cup ramped up a notch courtesy of an innovative internal marketing campaign that was embraced as fervently as the now notorious (and premature) ‘Where’s Messi’ viral videos.
A few days before the big kick-off in Qatar, Action’s 48 staff were handed their very own Panini-style World Cup sticker albums, complete with blank spaces for each of their colleagues’ profile stickers. Instead of Neymar, Kane, and Ronaldo, staff would be seeking Naina, Mawada, and Rob. They were also handed one small envelope containing their first batch of stickers.
Tasked with developing a more collaborative, communal work environment at Action after joining in early 2022, Amanda Modesto, the passionate project architect, explained the rules and rationale behind the campaign: 10 stickers per packet, with further packets every week for the duration of the tournament. With swapping repeat stickers the only way to fill their individual albums, each sticker featured the staff member’s name, nationality, and snippets of information about them, such as job title, city of birth, year they joined the company, and the team they would be supporting in Qatar.
“Communication between employees is one of the pillars of a successful business,” said Modesto, who collected Panini’s famous football stickers as a child growing up in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. “Action is a family-run agency that prides itself on a people-first culture. The agency has grown a lot in a very short time, but we live for the culture and we pride ourselves on ensuring closeness and camaraderie among colleagues. One of the main objectives of the World Cup sticker campaign was to get staff interacting, trading stickers with colleagues they may not work directly with every day, and see how the team creatively negotiate.”
The campaign not only ensured the firm was actively engaged during the first World Cup held in the Middle East, it also instigated interaction between all colleagues across various departments, reinforced rapport, levelled any perceived hierarchies, and strengthened the sense of belonging. For five weeks during the World Cup, the company’s offices in Dubai Media City turned into a hive of chitter-chatter, sticker-swapping, and crazy swap deals as colleagues swapped Rayans for Beths and Nours for Mohammads in a quest to be first to complete their album.
“Action grows every year, but we will never be a faceless corporate agency where colleagues don’t know each other beyond an email address and shared account – that’s vital to our DNA,” said Euan Megson, Action UAE’s managing director, who as a child traded Panini stickers in the playground of Dubai English Speaking School (DESS). “I immediately loved Amanda’s idea. Sticker-swapping is a World Cup tradition, and the Action World Cup sticker album proved a fantastic way of engaging every staff member and bringing football-themed fun to the office at a special time for the region. It’s been a great initiative and I feel it’s really strengthened relationships and friendships in the office.”
To drive home the need to collaborate, one gold sticker of each staff member was printed, with the goal being to collect your own “gold” – in true Dubai fashion. With the rare golds in high-demand, colleagues were soon bartering and bargaining with each other, desperate to secure their “shiny”.
“Managing it all was a delicate task,” said Modesto. “What I found most interesting was that the dynamics of the album went deeper than presumed. It almost bordered on a social experiment; a quieter, less risky way to analyse employee behaviour in terms of business. Who operates alone and who prefers to partner up? Who wants to win at all costs? Who is generous in their trades? We had one employee collect all the Michaels to increase the stickers’ rarity and drive the swap value up.”
A Herculean creative and logistical effort, the campaign required 50 14-page albums and 2,500+ stickers – all of which had to be designed, drafted, edited, printed, cut-out, and distributed. The benefits, however, were self-evident. On the day Modesto was due to distribute the final packets, the office was alive with anticipation as colleagues buzzed around awaiting her arrival, discussing swap strategies, and moving between departments seeking out early trade opportunities. And just like in the playgrounds of DESS all those years ago, the phrase floating through the air was: “Got. Got. Need!”
