+37.8%TV-package sales through a continental campaign built with no sponsorship rights
How do you turn a continental football tournament into television sales, across ten countries, when you hold no sponsorship rights to the tournament itself? At Bboxx, energy and e-mobility across 10 African countries, the answer was a message ladder built around passion, belonging and urgency, timed to the Africa Cup of Nations, hosted in Ivory Coast and played in January and February 2024. As Group Head of Marketing & Communications, I designed the campaign at group level in the quarter before the tournament and briefed it for roll-out in every market.
The method: strip the creative of anything that needed a licence (players, team colours, broadcaster ties), build a three-month message ladder that ends on urgency rather than football, and run it in every market, whether the home team had qualified or not. A fifty-dollar paid-media test confirmed the mechanic before the group committed a full budget: twenty-five thousand people reached, five hundred and eighty-seven clicks, under ten cents each.
Bboxx's own year-end review credited the campaign with a 37.8% increase in TV-package sales across five of the group's markets. This page details the constraint, the system, and that result.
Bboxx sells pay-as-you-go energy and e-mobility, including television sets, to off-grid households across ten African countries. Going into the fourth quarter of 2023, the group needed to move television stock before the December peak. The Africa Cup of Nations, hosted in Ivory Coast and played in January and February 2024, gave nine to ten markets a single moment to watch at once, whether their own team was on the pitch or not.
Bboxx is not an AFCON sponsor and holds no rights to the tournament, its teams or its players. Seven of the group's ten markets, Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Mali, Nigeria and Senegal, had a qualified team; three, Kenya, Rwanda and Togo, did not. A campaign built around a specific national side would have needed a licence Bboxx did not have, and would have excluded three markets outright. The creative had to sell the tournament's excitement, not a specific team or player, and not a broadcaster partnership Bboxx didn't have.
1 · Remove the players from every visual.
The first production task, before any design work, was to strip players and licensed football imagery out of every artwork. Bboxx held no sponsorship deal and no rights to any player's likeness or team badge: the campaign could sell the tournament's excitement without licensing it.
2 · Build a three-month message ladder.
October opened on anticipation, 'Share the Passion'. November shifted to national pride, 'Support Your Team', with copy such as 'Your Dad Deserves to Support His Favorite Team!'. December closed on urgency, 'The Perfect Christmas Gift', pairing the television with the season under 'Last Chance to Follow the Games on TV!'.
3 · Produce at group level, adapt at country level.
Two designers built the core AFCON creative centrally over six weeks. Each market then adapted it to what it actually had: flyers distributed in the field in Rwanda, end screens and social posts in Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the tournament worked directly into the sales pitch in Ivory Coast and Senegal. The same base creative had to work whether or not the local team was playing.
4 · Test the media buy before scaling it.
A fifty-dollar paid-media test, presented to country directors at the October 2023 strategy days, reached twenty-five thousand people for six hundred and twenty-seven interactions and five hundred and eighty-seven clicks to the call centre, under ten cents a click. That result funded the country-level campaigns that followed through December.
5 · Coordinate nine markets from one campaign line.
The campaign ran alongside each country's own marketing plan, tracked weekly at group level for budget spend and rollout status, market by market, the same discipline behind the fifteen-role marketing organisation built for the group's ten markets.
Bboxx group scope, Q4 2023 to February 2024.
- TV-package sales up 37.8% across five markets, Togo, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo, per Bboxx's 2023 year-end review
- Paid-media test: 25,000 people reached, 627 interactions, 587 clicks for $50, under $0.10 a click
- Campaign creative deployed across all 10 group markets, including the three not competing in the tournament
A campaign does not need sponsorship rights to use a moment an entire continent is watching. It needs a message that survives without the licence, passion and belonging first, the product's actual purpose last. If your market has a moment like this and your brand cannot buy its way into it, this is the same problem solved without that budget.
A moment everyone is watching, and no budget to buy into it?
The first call30 minutes. We talk about your traction and what is blocking it. You leave with 2 or 3 moves you can act on. No pitch.
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