Zalando

The challenge

The Royal Belgian Football Association and Zalando signed a five-year partnership. The objective was clear: generate widespread awareness for the collaboration while strengthening Zalando’s position at the intersection of football, fashion and culture.

But sponsorship announcements are often short-lived. They generate attention for a day, before quickly disappearing from the public conversation.

To make the partnership matter, we needed to create a story that people would genuinely want to engage with. One that would travel beyond sports media, reach new audiences and establish Zalando as a credible player within Belgian football culture.

Community Insight

Football has evolved far beyond the pitch. Today’s players are not only athletes, but also cultural icons whose style, personality and lifestyle generate as much attention as their performances on the field. From stadium arrivals and social content to press appearances and behind-the-scenes moments, fans increasingly engage with everything surrounding the game. As a result, football’s biggest stages have also become fashion stages, creating a natural connection between the passion for football and the desire for self-expression through style.

The idea

Rather than simply announcing a partnership, we transformed the entire Red Devils ecosystem into a fashion platform.

From the country’s most iconic football stadium to player arrivals, media moments and tournament storytelling, we turned the world surrounding the Red Devils into a stage for style and self-expression. By bringing fashion into football’s most visible moments, we created a natural and culturally relevant role for Zalando within Belgian football culture.

In doing so, we transformed a football partnership into a nationwide fashion moment.

The roll-out

To build anticipation ahead of the official announcement, we gave a leading fashion journalist exclusive access to the Red Devils content shoot in Tubize. The resulting coverage offered audiences an early look behind the scenes and helped create momentum before the partnership was officially revealed.

The partnership was officially unveiled where Belgian football matters most: on the pitch of the King Baudouin Stadium. Instead of organising a traditional press event, we turned the stadium into a fashion stage. A striking long table was placed at the centre of the field, bringing together media, creators, influencers and stakeholders at the very place where the Red Devils write football history.

Surrounding them, the stadium itself became part of the story, with ZALANDO spelled out across the empty stands as a bold visual symbol of the new partnership. Combined with Red Devils players appearing in Zalando-styled looks, the event transformed a sponsorship announcement into a memorable cultural moment that generated extensive coverage, social content and conversation.

As the tournament approached, we continued to elevate football’s most visible touchpoints into fashion moments. One of the most powerful examples was the Red Devils’ arrival at Tubize. Through a guerrilla-style activation featuring a branded Zalando truck as the backdrop, we transformed a routine arrival into a recurring style showcase. Players became fashion personalities, while Zalando became the lens through which Belgian audiences experienced the team’s off-pitch identity.

The activation was further amplified through an exclusive media partnership with ELLE. Readers received behind-the-scenes access to player looks, complemented by curated “shop-the-look” alternatives available through Zalando. By combining editorial storytelling, cultural relevance and product inspiration, the collaboration successfully connected football culture with fashion discovery.

Throughout the tournament, we continued to fuel the conversation through exclusive interviews, creator collaborations, fashion editorials, fan street-style features and behind-the-scenes content. Rather than simply following the story, fans became active participants in it, helping establish Zalando as a natural part of the Belgian football conversation both on and off the pitch.

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+70

Media clippings

+25M

potential pr reach

1PM/7PM

vtm nieuws coverage

2.3M

CREATOR POSTS VIEWS

ZALANDO

The challenge

Community Insight

The idea

The roll-out

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