When Lionel Messi launches his cologne, Messi The Fragrance, across the world, it will have the fingerprints of a Brisbane indie all over it. BCM Group secured one of the biggest celebrity brand launch campaigns in recent memory. This is the story of how they won the contract, delivered the work and what it was like working alongside the greatest footballer of the modern era.
The new Messi cologne might smell distinctly like the Argentinian superstar but the creative assets that will be used to launch it worldwide have an Aussie flavour.
BCM Group, a full-service Brisbane independent agency with 36 staff, are behind the the launch assets, including a film that was released yesterday.
The agency first got wind that the makers of the Messi cologne were looking for a creative agency late last year.
The Melbourne based Game On Product Group – which licences branded health and beauty merchandising for sporting clients, including the AFL, Premier League, and Tottenham Hotspurs – had just secured the global rights to create, manufacture, distribute and market Lionel Messi’s debut cologne, Messi The Fragrance.
Rather than looking at creative agencies in the US, where Messi is based, Game On wanted an Aussie shop to deliver the work.
BCM Group founder and MD Phil McDonald told B&T they were invited to pitch for the work and won the business for two reasons.
Firstly, their strategic and creative vision for the campaign aligned with what Game On and Messi’s management team had in mind. Secondly, the agency had previous experience working on global campaigns with celebrities, including Shaquille O’Neal.
“Messi has done a lot of brand endorsement work but this is one of the first ones where he put his name to it and used the ‘Messi’ brand,” McDonald said.
“The brief was obviously a tricky one. Aside from the fact that it had to be global and a concept easily understood in a visual sense, it had to operate in the fragrance category. If you look at the fragrance category, it operates in a very deliberate and sort of specialised way. We also had to represent the values of Leo.”
The ad needed to represent Messi’s values as a ‘footballer’, ‘world champion’, ‘father’, ‘a gentleman’ and a ‘legend’. The creative had to work in English and Spanish, including Argentinian dialects of the language.
BCM Group assembled a crack team to work on the project, including creative leads Shaun Egan and Sam Boyd, head of production Ann Reilly and digital experience design lead Max McDonald. Phil McDonald led on strategy.
Initially, BCM Group had around nine ideas that varied from being more football focused to telling Messi’s life journey to being more product led.
They landed with a film that sees the Argentinian walking through a hall of mirrors, providing plenty of different angles of the footballing great.
This leads up to a shot where Messi and his reflection appear multiple times across the frame and the tagline: ‘Messi, more than we see’.
“Obviously fragrance gives you something else that you can’t see when you put it on. So it became this perfect marriage of Leo and what the fragrance delivers to someone who uses it,” McDonald said.
“Leo is a global mega brand in himself and there were lots of filters the whole thing had to go through,” McDonald said. “I think we nailed it in terms of summing up what he was about, and what the fragrance does.
‘No room for error’
BCM Group and Game On flew to the US to work with a production company called Smuggler to produce the creative.
They had a week in Miami – where Messi currently plies his trade with Miami FC – to shoot all the elements of the campaign, including stills for point of sale, digital, social, the film and its various different lengths.
It took a few days to build the hall of mirrors set on an empty lot in Miami. For most of the two-day shoot, the crew filmed a Messi lookalike to ensure the lighting, movement and camera tracking was spot on ahead of the footballer’s arrival.
“You only get Leo for half a day, about three or four hours. So it was a finely tuned production schedule,” McDonald recalled. “There wasn’t a lot of room for error. We had to choreograph this thing within an inch of its life. Hence, we appointed an amazing director called C Prinz, who is actually a choreographer and has worked with Kanye West and The Weeknd.
“We pretty much shot the ad with the body double, and then shot what we needed with Leo. This idea was designed so that it is really easy for him to do. He just had to be himself.
“I think often with these celebrity campaigns, the creative expects the celebrity to do too much, given they are not actors. So this was more about him and who he naturally is. I think he enjoyed doing it and loved the idea behind it.”
‘An unassuming, friendly character’
So what was it like working with one of the most recognisable stars in the world?
“Messi is put on such a massive pedestal by so many hundreds of millions of people around the world. What I found incredible is just how humble he is in person,” ,” McDonald said. “He’s a very unassuming, friendly character, not like some of the other global sporting people I’ve met before, who shall remain nameless.”
“Leo doesn’t speak a lot of English and he’s very reserved. He has very certain ways that he wants to work, but it’s all respectful and professional. He also went out of his way to show his appreciation to everyone. It was a great experience and seamless.”
Messi is noted for his love of fashion. The Argentinian maestro often dresses sharply at the annual Ballon D’Or Awards, a trophy he has won a record eight times.
The burning question, however, is whether Messi The Fragrance actually smells like Lionel Messi, the footballing god.
“I don’t know what I was expecting he would smell like, to be honest. But when he put it on and was wearing it, he liked it. So I guess, therefore, it is of him,” said McDonald, who has also worn the cologne
“It’s actually a really nice fragrance and is designed to appeal to a wide cross section of people all over the world. I believe it’s also the first of a range. There will be facial care and other products he will be bringing out as well.”
Imagine a Brissie indie creating an ad for Messi The Moisturiser.
