Croatian Football Federation’s World Cup digital fan engagement campaign up for UEFA award

The Croatian Football Federation (HNS) has been nominated for one of UEFA’s marketing awards.

HNS is one of three finalists in the category for best digital fan engagement campaign, The other two finalists are the football federations of Denmark and Russia. 

An independent jury selected the best three projects in five categories with Croatia among the 15 best marketing projects for its ‘Obitelj’ (Family) social media campaign it ran during the World Cup in Russia. 

The campaign was created by HNS spokesperson Tomislav Pacak and public relations manager Nika Bahtijarević and they will present it at the UEFA GROW awards in Riga on 31 October. The winners will be announced on the night. 

Croatia’s campaign was created and executed without using any agency and was down in-house. Along with Pacak and Bahtijarević, journalist Borna Rupnik, photographer Drago Sopta and graphics associate Nikša Martinac also worked on the project. 

Every two years the UEFA GROW awards are held for the best marketing projects from national federations. This year 106 projects from 44 national federations were submitted for the awards.

This is the third time Croatia has been nominated for a UEFA marketing award. In 2014 they won the award for best digital communication with fans and in 2016 was a finalist in the grassroots category for its football camp project for minorities.