THY Heart of 84 Million Jersey

Euro 2020 was on, but the stands were empty. Postponed from 2020 to 2021 due to the pandemic, the tournament would see the national team take the field — but for the first time, without the roar of 84 million people behind them.

As main sponsor of the Turkish national football teams, Turkish Airlines wanted to break that silence. The brief from Publicis Groupe Türkiye was clear: build something that would let the fans physically be there with the players, even when they couldn't be in the stadium.

Not an ad. Something that would live on the players' bodies, where the cameras couldn't always see — but where it would matter most.

The oldest trap in sponsorship: the brand joins the tournament, the logo gets stamped on the shirt, the fan buys the shirt, end of story. The brand is never really "with" the team — it's just on it.

The pandemic created a strange opportunity to break that cliché. With empty stadiums, "being there" stopped being a metaphor and became a literal absence. If we could carry the fans' heartbeats to where the player's skin actually touches the jersey, sponsorship could stop being a logo and become a bond. An invisible one.

The brief came from Publicis Groupe Türkiye: "Even if the fans can't be in the stadium, let their hearts be with the team." We developed the solution, the technology, the product manufacturing and the on-the-ground operation.

We Solved It

"Transmitting a heartbeat" usually conjures an app, an audio file, a screen. But the heart of the brief (the pun is intentional) said: "It must be in skin contact with the player." So the solution wasn't an app — it was a wearable device. Not passive; reactive on touch. Invisible, but felt.

We Engineered and Built the Product

• Hardware: Haptic motor (vibration), piezo sensor (touch detection), mini speaker (heartbeat sound), rechargeable battery, custom PCB
• Casing: Fully 3D-printed — thin, flexible, sweat-protected, sized to fit inside a football jersey
• Integration: Sewn into the inner lining of the jersey, positioned over the player's chest
• Heartbeat data: Heart rhythms of fans we brought from across Turkey were recorded during qualifying matches, layered, and loaded into the device

Scope

• Production of 50 jerseys + 50 wearable devices
• On-site fan heartbeat collection (with a custom recording device)
• Player and influencer delivery operation (each with the letter)
• 4 interactive rakets — proximity- and touch-sensing, with custom haptic + audio output
• Delivering raw fan heartbeat audio to Sibourne (with Mahmut Orhan) — the fans' heartbeat became the rhythm of the campaign anthem

Team

• Project Lead & Experience Design: Atilla Baybara
• Technology Development: Utku Olcar
• Operations: Yiğit Sarı
• Client Relations: Şaban Yılmaz
• + Hardware, 3D-print, software and on-site team

• The team flew to Europe carrying 84 million heartbeats — physically filling the absence the empty stadiums had created
• Sibourne (with Mahmut Orhan) composed the national team anthem from fan heartbeats — the campaign's music was built from the rhythm of the streets, not the stadium
• A TV commercial aired and the activation was covered across print, digital, radio and TV (including Survivor)
• Sponsorship positioned "inside" the jersey, not "on" it — shifting THY's sponsorship perception from logo to bond
• One of the most-remembered activations of Turkey's Euro 2020 — players and influencers shared the jerseys on social media, the campaign spread organically