People’s Puskas

Strategi

Football is a universal language, but for too long, the recognition of great goals was reserved for professionals. At every level of the game, brilliant moments happen every day, yet they remain unseen. People’s Puskas set out to change the way football celebrates greatness by shifting recognition from exclusive to inclusive, from elite football to football for all.

To do this, the campaign needed to achieve three things simultaneously:

1. Create a new cultural standard for goal recognition, making People’s Puskas a badge of honor for grassroots footballers.
2. Turn the campaign into a movement, where players, clubs, and communities became active participants and storytellers.
3. Scale across multiple channels to maximize engagement without diluting local authenticity.

To establish People’s Puskas as a true global award, we needed a strategy that reflected this shift, ensuring the campaign wasn’t just seen but owned by the football world itself.

A player-first creative framework was essential. Trends show that modern audiences engage most with content that feels personal and participatory, so People’s Puskas couldn’t just present goals, instead they needed to make every player feel like a champion. This meant giving participants the tools to drive their own recognition, ensuring every nomination became a story worth sharing.

But recognition in football isn’t just digital. It’s deeply rooted in community. The strategy had to tap into the existing ecosystems of grassroots football, where clubs, federations, and local football media hold cultural influence. Studies show that local validation is a key driver of engagement in sports participation, meaning the campaign needed to feel organic at every level from Sunday league teams to national football associations.

Finally, the strategy had to ensure seamless cross-channel execution. Digital-first audiences consume content across multiple platforms, with video-led social formats driving the highest engagement in sports storytelling. To compete with mainstream football awards, People’s Puskas needed to exist across the full spectrum of football culture, from social media virality to earned media legitimacy and global sports partnerships. This required a frictionless submission and voting system to lower barriers to entry, a localized content strategy to drive engagement at scale, and a high-impact media partnership to cement the campaign’s credibility.

By aligning with personalized storytelling, community-driven engagement, and cross-channel scalability, People’s Puskas was strategically positioned to redefine football recognition, shifting it from elite to grassroots, from exclusive to inclusive.

Løsning

To bring People’s Puskás to life, the campaign had to be seamlessly integrated across digital, social, and grassroots football ecosystems, ensuring it was both participatory and credible. Every platform played a distinct role, working together to maximize engagement while maintaining local authenticity.

1. A player-first creative framework
To make every player feel like a champion, People’s Puskas provided personalized content assets for nominees, empowering them to drive their own recognition. These custom shareables, optimized for social-first formats (Instagram, TikTok, X, Facebook, and YouTube), turned each player into an ambassador for the campaign, leveraging their own networks for organic reach. A bespoke digital platform made submissions and voting frictionless. The system was designed for ease-of-use, allowing anyone, anywhere, to submit their goal in just a few steps. To maintain fairness and credibility, safeguards against fraudulent voting behavior were implemented, ensuring an authentic winner selection process.

2. Hyper-local meets global activation
Grassroots clubs, football federations, and regional football media were key amplifiers. Instead of relying solely on Veo’s reach, the campaign was embedded within local football cultures, with federations pushing their own nominees and clubs driving their own narratives. This approach allowed communities to take ownership of the campaign. A standout example was the only female contender and her 100% female-run club, which became a symbol of representation and inclusivity, further driving engagement. At a global level, earned media played a critical role. Sport Bible and major football publications like Kicker (Germany) gave the campaign journalistic legitimacy, extending its visibility beyond social channels.

3. Cross-channel rollout for maximum reach
To scale the campaign, People’s Puskas had to exist across all key football culture touchpoints:
- Social-first virality. With an emphasis on short-form video and shareable graphics, the campaign flourished on Instagram, TikTok, X and Youtube where organic storytelling thrives.
- Owned digital ecosystem. The dedicated voting and submission platform provided a seamless user experience, ensuring accessibility at a global scale on any device.
- Earned media & PR. Coverage from top-tier football media outlets reinforced credibility, bridging grassroots engagement with mainstream football culture.
- Global sports partnership (ESPN). To cement People’s Puskas as a serious global award, ESPN announced the Final 8, executing a multi-channel push across TV, social media, and digital news.

With a perfect synergy of grassroots engagement, social amplification, and high-profile media integration, People’s Puskas successfully bridged amateur and professional football, making goal recognition truly global and inclusive.