To celebrate the Brazilian Corinthians football team turning 100 Nike and Saatchi & Saatchi Brazil created a fake country for the teams 30 million fans called The Republica Popular do Corinthians. It came complete with its own passports (stamped with matches attended), money, legislation, Birth Certificates, and even its own president!
The results of the campaign were astounding:
- More than 1 million ID card issued in the first month
- $7.8 million of free publicity
- Over 1.2 million people signed up for the Nike mailing list
- $5.1 million of campaign related merchandise sold
- The president of Brazil also publicly became the president of Corinthians