1. Project: ZZ CHAMPIONSHIP
Category: SPONSORSHIP
Summary
The ZZ Championship was originally created in response to the country’s financial
incapacity to offer and provide young people with contemporary sports and active
leisure opportunities. It was developed as sports and creative competitions for
schoolchildren with the aim of promoting sport as an exciting and healthy way of
spending time.
Thanks to schoolchildren’s great interest and the creative contribution of Zelta Zivtiņa,
it became Latvia’s largest school sports and games event. Over five years, more than
6 000 classes, or 152 000 schoolchildren from ten Latvian cities have participated in
ZZ Championships, competing to be the overall best classes in Latvia.
Various non-traditional sports games, creative competitions, also sports classes lead
by well-known athletes unify and reflect the Zelta Zivtiņa brand values: friendship,
togetherness, team spirit and excitement. Introducing the SMS championship into the
ZZ Championship disciplines, also organising various challenges using mobile
phones and their technical capabilities, has enabled the acquaintance of the specific
Zelta Zivtiņa target group and check their knowledge of various telecommunications
services.
Having becoming a national favourite youth event, the ZZ Championship has
strengthened the recognition and loyalty to the Zelta Zivtiņa brand, ensuring most-
admired brand of prepaid-card status for a number of years.
Situation
 Zelta Zivtiņa is a prepaid-card, one of whose most important target groups are
young people aged 12 to 20. The brand’s values are friendship, togetherness
and team spirit. The brand’s sponsorship strategy leads Zelta Zivtiņa to where
its customers are: providing support for activities that are important to its
customers.

2.  With the country’s options to run substantial sports activities for youth
decrease, many young people are replacing sport with other entertainment
options. Latvian schoolchildren lacked a large-scale project that could counter
the critical situation of educating young people about sports and encourage
them to take part in healthy lifestyles.
Objectives
The ZZ Championship’s objectives are:
1) to promote sport as an exciting, interesting and healthy way of spending time,
attracting schoolchildren to an active lifestyle;
2) to change young people's attitudes towards sports lessons, involving those young
people, indifferent to sports in sports activities;
3) to increase the visibility of Zelta Zivtiņa and enhance brand loyalty;
4) to communicate Zelta Zivtiņa brand values and deliver these to its specific target
group.
Strategy
In view of the country’s minimal capacity to organise a healthy lifestyle and sporting
activity-building measures, also the limited opportunities for young people to engage
in contemporary and appealing sports activities, Zelta Zivtiņa created the ZZ
Championship.
It was designed as a platform for demonstrating Zelta Zivtiņa values and philosophy
and reaching target groups, while fulfilling an important social mission.
The large-scale event with non-traditional sports disciplines, interesting exercises,
also the participation of well-known athletes, helps schoolchildren form an idea of
sport as an engaging recreation activity creating a positive attitude.
Young people – one of Zelta Zivtiņa‘s key audiences – get an opportunity to have fun,
test their sports prowess, erudition and the unity of their entire class.
In contrast, competing with a variety of telecoms-related paraphernalia, including
direct ZZ services in the activities, ZZ gets an opportunity to test youth's knowledge of
the telecommunications sector, while strengthening ZZ’s business situation.
Execution

3. The ZZ Championship involves several stages.
 To promote healthy lifestyles among schoolchildren, well-known athletes from
several sports were selected as championship ambassadors. They took
lessons in schools, sharing their success story, how sport shaped their lives
and accomplishments.
 Ten semi-final competitions, comprising sports, intellectual and creative
disciplines, taking place in various Latvian cities, determine the finalists.
 The Grand Final starts with a formal street procession of championship
participants and determines the winners.
 Alongside the final, Zelta Zivtiņa organises sports events for families and
friends, enabling them all to have fun and support their own competitors.
 In order to attract responses from more young people, the heroes of the Zelta
Zivtiņa advertising series, much loved by the target group, participated in ZZ
Championship adverts, semi-finals and Final.
By uniting several thousand ZZ Championship contestants, spending time together
and supplying positive energy, Zelta Zivtiņa proves it is Latvia’s friendliest phone-
card.
Documented Results
Since the ZZ Championship was started, the number of participants has significantly
increased each year: originally it was 313 classes, or 7825 schoolchildren, but this
year there were already more than 46 000 schoolchildren from all over Latvia. Last
year, 85% of all Latvian young people of ages corresponding to competition rules and
criteria participated in the ZZ Championship.
The ZZ Championship has become the most visited and substantial youth activity in
Latvia, participants outnumbering those at the Latvian School Youth Song and Dance
Festivals in 2005 and 2010.
Having become a national-scale event, the ZZ Championship has gained wide media
coverage – championship activities being reported on national and regional media,
with hundreds of articles published.
The ZZ Championship also strengthened Zelta Zivtiņa brand awareness and user
loyalty: Zelta Zivtiņa has been recognised as the most popular and best-loved brand
of prepaid cards in Latvian for a number of years.