It was 23 years in the making, Scotland had not qualified for a tournament since 1998, there were fans that had never experienced tournament football before and the fans that had been waiting for a long time. Combined with the global pandemic and easing of social restriction, this was a summer to remember, this was ‘getting back to normal’, this was getting back together… this is what we had all been waiting for…both as fans and as a creative agency!

The Scottish FA and Scotland National Team recognised the significance of our first major tournament in 23 years. Back in 1998 squads were announced in newspapers and rolling news reports, the fanciful thoughts of online and social media announcements still just a twinkle in the internet’s eye. We were tasked with making something unique and memorable for Scotland’s Online Tartan Army, an announcement of 25 new heroes for the digital age. Working closely with the client we concocted an ambitious plan to give each player their moment during this 4-and-a-half minute video. Scenarios played out all across Scotland of well-known faces and members of the public telling the nation who would be lining up in dark blue this summer.

Ambitious was the word, but it was worth every minute of the film we created. We broke into two parts to cover as much ground as we could; The Scottish FA would film in the West of Scotland and Studio Something would cover the East of Scotland. We covered Anstruther to Kelvingrove, Glenrothes to Argyle St, Stockbridge to Hampden. 

This was a huge element in what we were creating; allowing as much of Scotland as possible the opportunity to announce our first major tournament squad in 23 years. We employed the help of some famous faces as well as some not-so-famous, we used some landmark locations and some not-so-landmark and gave the national team the love, care, and attention it deserved in 2021.

25 different scenarios were put together and the team was announced in a unique fashion, uniting the nation behind their heroes and having a wee laugh about it at the same time. There’s something truly Scottish about that.

On Twitter alone the film was viewed over 550k times, and received just shy of 4.5k retweets, making it one of the national team’s most popular video pieces of content in 2021.

We all know football fans can love you or hate you at the drop of a hat, but the sentiment was also resoundingly positive and gave people a huge talking point, as well as beginning the pre-tournament buzz. 

Qatar 2022 coming up… more of the same?