Case Study: rebel – World Cup Freestyle
No words. Just rhythm, skill, and national pride.
No words. Just rhythm, skill, and national pride.
With the world’s eyes on the World Cup, rebel needed a campaign that could move fast, speak universally, and bring the world’s biggest sporting moment to life—in store, online, and on screen. So we stripped it back. No voiceovers. No slogans. Just rhythm, colour, and movement.
We partnered with the Trickstars—freestyle footballers known for their gravity-defying tricks and fluid control—and built a high-tempo spot that was as hypnotic as it was hype. The premise was simple: one freestyler per national team kit, filmed solo against a backdrop of animated national pride.
We opened on an England strip—crosses painted over brickwork, a London bus in the background, the crosshairs of the camera snapping into place. From there, it was a rapid-fire cut across continents. A Brazilian player twisting under a graffitied Christ the Redeemer. An Argentine kit backdropped by a charging bull emerging from the national flag. Boots flick. Ball spins. Crosshairs shift. Snap, snap, snap. Each frame landed like a beat.
The clicking, toe-tapping soundtrack tied it all together—built to be percussive, syncopated, and infectious. It held the pace, carried the transitions, and made the whole film feel like choreography.
From a production standpoint, we designed everything around the crosshair frame logic—keeping action centre-screen so we could cut hard between locations and kits without losing the viewer’s orientation. The result: fluid, seamless editing that created continuity even across stylistic shifts.
This was a campaign designed for the multicultural, multilingual football audience in Australia—and beyond. By removing dialogue and focusing on expressive, energetic visual language, we built something that was accessible, memorable, and unmistakably global.
From a behavioural perspective, the campaign employed pattern repetition, salience through motion, and cultural anchoring—allowing viewers to connect not only with the product (the team strips), but with their national identity. Emotional cues were embedded in flags, landmarks, and colourways—not explained, just felt.
Results:
5.6M combined views across social, YouTube, and in-store environments
38% uplift in team strip sales during the campaign window
21% increase in football category engagement across email and digital channels
Top-ranked piece of campaign content by average viewer completion rate
Successfully syndicated across rebel’s multicultural media partners without need for localisation
Why it worked:
It skipped the pitch and went straight for the pulse. World Cup Freestyle captured the rhythm of the tournament, the pride of nations, and the poetry of the game—in a language every football fan understands.