Creative Corner: WWF, Heinz X Heineken, and The Vikings are coming home

With the World Cup kicking off next week, it would have been impossible to ignore the football-shaped elephant in the room, so I didn't try...

I'll be watching England's first game from Spain (thankfully not Croatia), which feels like an interesting place to witness the glory. This week's three picks span a gravity-defying charity film, a fridge-raid brand collab, and a squad photo that broke the internet.

WWF takes football to the canopy

Of the three this week, this is the one that uses football most ambitiously and earns its place on more than novelty value alone, which is tricky for a topic largely unrelated to football.

Created by Studio Birthplace, WWF's Team Forest campaign reimagines an Indonesian rainforest as a football pitch, not metaphorically, but literally. Players move through the landscape vertically, scaling trunks, sprinting across the forest floor, soaring through the canopy on rigging systems that were specially designed to leave the environment below untouched. As a piece of filmmaking, it's really something.

It’s a conscious decision to lead with wonder rather than guilt.

Environmental campaigns so often reach for fear or urgency first, but this one does the opposite by betting that beauty and joy will do more to bring people in. Given how much doom we're all already swimming in, that’s both a brave and a smart creative choice.

The film isn't perfect. The closing copy doesn't quite land with the same force as everything that precedes it, but it barely matters. There's also an interactive platform where supporters can create their own avatars and join Team Forest, which gives the whole thing a life beyond a single watch. In a week of wall-to-wall World Cup noise, this is the one that made me actually stop in awe.

Heinz and Heineken: five lagers and a substitute

Now for something a little more lo-fi, and all the better for it.

The concept of this partnership of two giants is simple: a Heineken six-pack with the sixth slot taken by a bottle of Heinz ketchup. No new product, no launch event, no famous face. Just a visual gag built on the observation that these two have been sharing fridge space, events and (partial) names for decades and nobody ever formally introduced them.

It landed as a joint post across both brands' social channels simultaneously and for two giants of their respective categories, it's a surprisingly rare thing. When the pun does the talking, there really isn't much else to do.

There's a DIY edition too, which is essentially an invitation to buy both separately and put them next to each other yourself - a move of audacious cheek that I can't help but admire.

The Vikings are coming home

Norway hasn’t been to the World Cup since 1998, and to mark its return, the Norwegian football association commissioned photographer David Yarrow to shoot the full squad in Viking dress, in front of a fjord, for real. No CGI or shortcuts; full costumes, weapons, boats, the lot. The image is called The Vikings Are Coming, and it absolutely delivers on that promise.

Yarrow had previously shot Haaland alone in a similar setting, but for this one, he wanted the focus to be collective- and the result may be the first squad photo, at least that I know of, to actually go viral.

The moment that elevates it from great photography to something more, though, is what the fans did with it. 

At Norway's warm-up win over Sweden this week, supporters in the stands broke into a synchronised Viking rowing routine, drumbeat and all. When an image travels that quickly into the terraces before the tournament has even started, you know it's done something right.

That's it for this week's Creative Corner!

If you've seen something that's caught your eye, or if you've been working on something you're particularly proud of, please get in touch at emily.barnes@fanclubpr.com. I'd love to hear about it!