Hyundai taps history to celebrate women's football during World Cup

After a slow start, brand advertising around the Fifa Women's World Cup has finally hit the pitch in full force. Many of the advertisements continue to tell stories of player perseverance in the face of difficulties, either personal or gender-based in nature where they had to fight to earn the right to play.

In a positive signal of progression, we see fewer brand messages about the need to support women's football and more brand content depicting just how awesome and dynamic women's football is for fans.

Then, there are ads that encapsulate all of the above, such as Hyundai's trip through history, looking at how far women's football has come, and how far it will go. The ad jumps through time, led by a female protagonist who plays her way through 130 years of history of the women's sport, from beginnings in Victorian England, to the first women's match in London in 1895, to the first all-women versus male game in 1918, and the bans enacted against the sport before the first Fifa women's international match in 1971.

Rather than trying to meticulously depict historical events, the film developed by Jung von Matt Sports instead focuses on entertaining in a fast-paced and dynamic way like a Fifa ad should.

Instead, more of the historical content is left to the accompanying campaigns and on-site activations. These include a print campaign that features original photography of Netti Honeyball, captain of the first women's football club in 1895.

Netti Honeyball

There is also a special exhibition at the Fifa Museum in Sydney sponsored by Hyundai entitled "Calling the Shots: Faces of Women's Football" which pays tribute to the legacy of players, staff and fans behind the sport. 

Beyond this, Hyundai has renewed its partnership to support for soccer NGO Common Goal which is also running activations across Australia and New Zealand, including an eight-day youth festival.

The film is nice, but it's this kind of support that legitmises Hyundai's association (it's been a Women's World Cup sponsor since 1999) and gives credence to its messages of seeing how far the sport has come, and where it will go next. 

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