The story of Alpsko Superheroes world began in 2018 when Ljubljanske mlekarne – dairy, part of Lactalis Group – used fresh (branded content) approach to combine athlete endorsements and Olympic sponsorship lifting their 8-year partnership with their ambassador Ilka Štuhec, World Downhill Champion, to a new level.
In 2020, Alpsko Superheroes team was joined by animated character of Žan Košir, 3-time Olympic medal holder in snowboarding, and Foxy, Olympic Team Slovenia’s mascot. Transformed Superhero athletes in the imaginative world of Alpsko mleko (milk brand), opened a new field of communication for the brand (and younger audience) – enabled storytelling, extensions for POS, print, internal communication and offered a perfect fit for the digital environment and personalised user engagement. The sponsorship platform started developing its long-term potential.
Between March 2020 and September 2021 several activations under “Superheroes umbrella” took place, including use of Chatbot for 1:1 communication with users, launch of Olympic licenced product and creation of two own video/mobile games (Olympic edition involving three Team Slovenia Tokyo 2020 athletes).
The sponsorship approach/campaign was accepted with enthusiasm among the audience while contributing to great brand and business results – over 700,000 branded content video views on brand’s social media, thousands of engaged users, 250,000 games played in branded environment, increase of Alpsko mleko brand recall as Team Slovenia sponsor by 150% (from 21% to 54%) compared to Rio 2016 Olympics and contribution to market share and sales index – made it the most successful sponsorship activation of the company to date.
