Euro 2020 has been a strong tournament for brand banter. While the England team performed on the pitch social media teams went into overdrive to support the team.

From Royal Mail’s wrapping up a football in brown parcel tape with the address ‘home’, only to have it changed to coming to Rome by Poste Italiane, to Sainsbury’s pitch perfect pledge to rename its Bath Southgate store The Gareth Southgate store should England win. (With waistcoats as standard uniform obvs.) 

Marketers could be forgiven for entirely forgetting the hysteria which followed Cristiano Ronaldo’s removal of Coca Cola bottles from a match press conference as Volkswagen’s tiny ball carrying car motored onto the pitch, resplendent with a Pride makeover, whizzed onto the pitch for the Euro 2020 final, to deliver the match ball (and a matching hashtag #WeDriveDiversity). (It even has its own twitter handle @tinyfootballcar).

Then came premium beer brand Peroni Nastro Azzurro, which temporarily rebranded as ‘Leoni’, the Italian word for ‘lions', in a new UK ad campaign, featuring three of the beer brand’s green bottles. 

The act of camaraderie to English beer drinkers to celebrate one of the country’s biggest sporting events since 1966, was created by Splendid Communications and ran on social, earned media and out of home. 

Commenting on the move,  Sam Rhodes, Marketing Director at ASAHI UK, explained: “Win or lose, we wanted to mark both teams’ incredible journey and what better way to do so than with a nod to the ‘three leonis’.