Case Study: rebel – The Heist
One vault. Every code. All eyes on the boots.
One vault. Every code. All eyes on the boots.
Launching a football season at rebel isn’t just a retail moment—it’s a brand opportunity. And with The Heist, we made it the biggest cinematic sports mash-up Australia had ever seen.
A genre parody of classic heist films—from Snatch to Fast & Furious—the campaign brought together top-tier athletes from across codes and across brands. AFL, rugby, football—Nike, Puma, Asics, Umbro. All on screen. All in one campaign. That alone was unprecedented.
The concept: a covert break-in at rebel headquarters. The mission? To steal back the season’s most coveted boots.
We open on a blacked-out van rolling into the lot. The crew—assembled from the best players in the country—emerge in black. We see stealth. Tension. Humour. A rugby brute rips the vault door clean off. An AFL marksman punts a spotlight from 40 metres. A footballer threads a shot through a laser array to hit the kill switch. Smooth. Stylish. Ridiculously fun.
Inside the digitally created white vault—sterile, backlit, cinematic—we see each athlete approach their boot. The glow intensifies. Each silo gets its moment. The message is clear: whatever your code, whatever your brand, this is where performance lives.
But what made The Heist truly remarkable wasn’t just the execution. It was the coordination behind the scenes.
Getting Nike, Puma, Umbro, and Asics to feature top-tier athletes in a shared campaign is almost unheard of. These are brands who don’t usually play in the same sandbox—let alone share the toys. But the strength of the concept, the clarity of the storyboard, and the confidence of the pitch won them over. We didn’t just ask for assets—we brought them a film worth being part of.
From a behavioural strategy perspective, The Heist used narrative transport, status alignment, and group identity cues to elevate boots beyond performance gear—they became symbols of power, precision, and control. By linking each boot to a code-specific hero, we embedded emotional relevance and tribal pride.
Results:
58% uplift in total boot sales during campaign window (YoY)
5.4M views across TV, YouTube, social, and in-store media
32% increase in multi-brand basket size during launch period
Cited by brand partners as “best-in-class multi-brand campaign”
Opened the door for future athlete-led cross-supplier activations
Why it worked:
Because it wasn’t just a launch. It was an event. The Heist turned a retail moment into a cinematic universe—and rebel into the only place where every code, every player, and every brand could steal the spotlight together.