Helvepharm: Veteran Football Players

Name	Position	Company
Martin Spillmann	Executive Creative Director	Spillmann/Felser/Leo Burnett
Barbara Hutter	Copywriter	Spillmann/Felser/Leo Burnett
Cornelia Wenk	Art Director	Spillmann/Felser/Leo Burnett
Rolf Zimmermann	Managing Director	Spillmann/Felser/Leo Burnett
Fabienne Brunner	Account Executive	Spillmann/Felser/Leo Burnett
Sebahat Derdiyok	Agency Producer	Spillmann/Felser/Leo Burnett
Michael Steiner	Director	Kontra Production
Michelle Seligmann	Producer	On Film

Helvepharm is a company distributing pharmaceutical generics. Since their internal structure is extremely lean, the brand positioning is "Helvepharm, the modest pharmaceutical company". Unlike the extremely rich Novartis and Bayer (the makers of Aspirin), Helvepharm does not sponsor an expensive top football team, but, since they are modest, sponsors the veterans of the FC Mьnchwilen. The campaign is based on this very modest sponsorship and aims to build up brand awareness and sympathy.

Since the stars of the campaign are the real veterans and not some actors, the viewers can easily identify with them. In addition, on the webpage of the veterans, consumers can learn more about the players, leave them a message on the message board, read the match reports and follow the teams' performance. Since the commercials are aired according to the match schedule of the team, it gives the campaign always a sense of actuality.

The base commercial announces the sponsorship, the days before the match the "good luck" commercial airs, after a match either the "congratulations" or "heads up" commercial runs for two days. The campaign was launched by hanging up posters in the bakery, the butchers, outside the church and at various places in the village of Mьnchwilen. At the same time the main local and national media were invited to the press conference. On the day of the launch, the villages' music played, afterwards the CEO of Helvepharm announced proudly the sponsorship, the fan sets where distributed to all the fans and kids and the Veterans played an official match. The local media as well as the Sunday paper wrote extensively about the launch. TV is the main media but a wide array of btl, online and direct marketing measures are also used.

Helvepharm is the only pharmaceutical generics company who shows a growing market share in 2007. All other companies are loosing market share. The client as well as the doctors - which are, besides the consumers, an important target group, are extremely proud and satisfied with the results.