COCA-COLA X EPL
GUESS THE GOALS
Campaign Strategy
The Challenge
Coca-Cola returned as a Premier League sponsor for the 25/26 season and tasked Ear to the Ground with creating a transaction-driving campaign that would engage younger football fans.
The Work
We launched a multi-channel campaign across cinema, OOH, and social, centred on a weekly “Guess the Goals” challenge. Fans predicted the total goals across each Premier League weekend for a chance to win match balls. The campaign starred Tottenham’s James Maddison, darts World Champion Luke Littler, actor Jasmine Jobson and creator John Nellis.
THE ROLE I PLAYED
I led the creative strategy and campaign rollout while freelancing at Ear to the Ground.
Modern football fandom crosses culture so it was important the campaign reflected that so I developed a strategy that would sidestep the traditional multiple footballers in a campaign route to go cross culture and creature led, to give Coca-Cola a blueprint for how they would work with talent on this campaign and beyond.
Spotting that Gen Z creators were increasingly collaborating with traditional football talent, we integrated creator John Nellis into the core campaign and gave him real creative autonomy. Instead of using creators purely for amplification, Nellis appeared in the main hero asset alongside the rest of the talent, while also creating additional content with talent on shoot day, driving authenticity and extended reach.
Everyone has seen Maddison’s dart celebration so working with Littler, a big football fan himself, made the mixing of world’s feel authentic, rather than forced and elevated the content as a result. We even had the talent creating additional content outside of contract because they were having such a good time on the shoot.
THE IMPACT
The campaign delivered an average of 10,000 weekly entries—5x higher than Coca-Cola’s typical NCP campaigns in GB.
By combining creator and traditional talent into one cohesive idea, we elevated a simple buy-scan-enter mechanic into something culturally relevant, engaging Premier League fans while embedding the brand authentically within creator-driven football culture.