In this year’s first round of the German DFB-Cup, the fifths division team, 1.FC Düren, had to face the Champion’s league winner FC Bayern Munich at the Allianz Arena. As MAN Truck & Bus is also a sponsor of Bayern Munich, the company decided to create equal opportunities at least off the pitch by giving a branded model of its latest bus generation to the underdogs of Düren.
The 1.FC Düren had the possibility to design the new team bus completely according their wishes. After surprising the players a week ahead of their once in a lifetime game with their own professional team bus, the team had not only the opportunity to use the bus for the 600 kilometer trip to their prominent opponents, but also for their own campaigns in the whole Düren-area. The bus of MAN was used as the face of the whole event of Düren’s trip to the treble winners.
As short reportages about underdog opponents of Bundesliga teams are usual habits during German DFB-Cup broadcast the sympathetic team from western Germany and its new gained team-bus received hours of air-time on the sports and non-sports TV channels, as well as multiple On-demand platforms and newspapers. The enormous medial interest is reflected by the names of the channels, which broadcasted about the small club and its bus: Sky Sports, ARD (first German TV-channel), Sport1, kicker, Bild and many more.
Finally, MAN’s campaign was shown in more than 60 reports and had a reach of 5 million (qualitative reach approximately 1.2 Million).
