How our Experience team crafted bespoke football shirts to combat online abuse

With the Women’s European Championship kicking off tomorrow at Old Trafford, EE have launched their Hope United campaign which highlights the online abuse of footballers. The EE Hope United team was created by Saatchi and Saatchi to highlight the problem of hate speech on social media and across the metaverse. The squad features well known players such as Lucy Bronze, Demi Stokes and Trent Alexander Arnold from the men’s and women’s premier leagues as well as parathletes.

Mill artists, Will MacNeil and Seph Li, designed the team’s kit, which is unique to each player and was created using a specially developed generative art application that converts statistical data about online hate speech into a mosaic of patterns and colour.

As Design Director, Will MacNeil, puts it: “Online abuse tends to be anonymous and therefore the abusers get away with horrific behaviour. We wanted to take that story out of the shadows and put it, literally, on a player’s chest”.

You can get in touch with our experience team regarding your upcoming project here.