Foosball Arcade
View the case- Brand
- Volkswagen
- Year
- 2016
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Automotive
- Mechanic
- Racing & Sports
- Platform
- Installation
- Agency
- DDB
- With
- UNIT9
Objective
As official partner of the French Football Federation, Volkswagen wanted to close the distance between fans and Les Bleus in the run-up to Euro 2016, building on the federation's "Fiers d'être Bleus" spirit. The brand's own line was "Parce que la passion est un sport collectif" — because passion is a team sport — and the goal was to turn broadcast viewers from spectators into participants who could actually influence a match.
Solution
Six France players sit down at what looks like a vintage foosball table, but the pitch is a 55-inch 4K screen: they grip the real rods and steer on-screen footballers through a live match, opening with a pick of a historic French squad — 1958, 1986 or 1998 — to play as. At home, fans log on to FraFra.fr to watch the match from multiple onboard cameras with replays and stats, then vote by tweeting the hashtag #FraFra for the chaos effect they want unleashed next: extra balls, goals that shrink, widen or shift, a tilted pitch, players removed, controls reversed, even the score changed. The effect with the most votes fires live on the table for a set stretch of play, then voting reopens for the next round. The same connected table later toured Volkswagen's Euro 2016 fan zones, where anyone walking by could play a match with effects triggered at random.
- 1
The audience finds the game before it starts by visiting the promo site FraFra.fr or following the #FraFra hashtag, ahead of a live broadcast from Clairefontaine.
- 2
Six French national team players pair off and choose a historic national squad (1958, 1986 or 1998) to play three foosball matches on a table whose playing surface is a 55-inch 4K screen: the players spin real rods, their motion drives digital figures on screen, with 5.1 sound and commentary.
- 3
The core loop is a voting round: the site offers about ten disruptive effects, viewers pick one and cast their vote by tweeting the #FraFra hashtag, the most-tweeted effect wins and plays out on the table for roughly 30 seconds, then a short pause opens the next round.
- 4
The effects that can be voted in vary widely: spawning or removing balls (including three at once), resizing or relocating the goals, tilting the field to send the ball rolling, deleting a player's figure to leave an opponent short-handed, inverting or speeding up the rod controls, and even changing the match score outright.
- 5
Viewers can switch between built-in camera views of the players and the field, call up replays (including slow motion), and check player statistics.
- 6
Part of the spectacle is watching the real players react at the table as the rules shift under them, their reactions shown in close-up.
- 7
Later, at Euro 2016, the table reappeared in Volkswagen's fan zone as a walk-up attraction where visitors could play it themselves, with effects triggered at random instead of by online vote.
