Most agencies mark a pitch win with a press release. Saint Elmo’s, part of Serviceplan Group, marked theirs by turning a fictional billionaire loose inside Borussia Dortmund and letting him insult the changing rooms.
“Buying Borussia” is the Munich agency’s first work as BVB’s creative agency, launched to open the Bundesliga season. It’s a mockumentary about a snobbish heir who wants the club as a birthday present and has no idea what he’d be buying.
From “Balls for Balls” to the whole account
The two already had history. Saint Elmo’s and Borussia Dortmund made the multi-award-winning “Balls for Balls” campaign together, a testicular cancer awareness push staged around a Bundesliga match.
That was a project. This is the account. Saint Elmo’s won the pitch for BVB’s creative business and will build national and international work alongside the club’s in-house team — starting with a film that needles the exact forces circling clubs like Dortmund.
The heir who’s never heard of Alexandra Popp
The premise runs on ignorance played completely straight. Guided through the club, the heir tries to assess BVB by luxury criteria and market logic, which goes about as well as it sounds.
He doesn’t recognise Alexandra Popp — Olympic champion, 145 caps for Germany and, since this spring, a Borussia Dortmund player. He knows a “Jürgen Popp”, possibly. Women’s football barely registers as a concept.
Then he sees the very ordinary changing room. His question: how is a player like Cristiano Ronaldo supposed to do his hair in surroundings like these?
Casting a character who already existed
The lead is content creator Max Früchtl, who built a following playing a rich Munich heir with no grip on everyday life. “Buying Borussia” drops that character into professional football and lets him keep going.
The comedy comes from the gap between what he’s looking for and what’s in front of him. Growth curves and return expectations don’t explain a club shaped by the people who turn up every week.
The joke has a position behind it
The film closes on “Built different”, the line carried across the campaign assets. It arrives on the back of a statement BVB published with its fans at the start of the season, reaffirming its commitment to the 50+1 rule and its long-term preservation.
“With ‘Buying Borussia’, we are addressing a highly topical issue that concerns many fans and approaching it in a unique and creative way,” says Marius Happe, Head of Marketing at Borussia Dortmund. “In Saint Elmo’s, we have found an agency that ideally complements our in-house capabilities.”
A club confident enough to be the punchline
“It was clear to us from the outset that we did not want to deliver heavy-handed criticism of commercialisation, but also wanted to entertain,” says Matthias Harbeck, CCO of the Saint Elmo’s Group. “The result is biting humour with a wonderful dose of self-deprecation. That was only possible because BVB is confident enough to laugh at itself.”
That self-deprecation is specific. The film jabs at the stadium kitchen reportedly costing €11 million and last season’s much-discussed away kit — the things Dortmund supporters were already arguing about.
Since launch it has passed 1 million views and 37,000 likes on Instagram alone. It was made in English deliberately and posted to both @bvb09 and the club’s English-language account @blackyellow, aimed at football fans who will never set foot in Dortmund.
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Matthias Harbeck LinkedIn
Marius Happe LinkedIn
Saint Elmo’s LinkedIn
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