The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2024
New Balance leaks São Paulo's 2024 jersey as a 1.2 TB photo no one can download
New Balance 'leaked' the new São Paulo FC shirt as a photo whose metadata holds 1.2 TB of club history, so no fan could download it.
New Balance · São Paulo FC
What it had to solve
Every season football fans hunt for leaked images of the next kit, and brands try to stop them. São Paulo FC — Brazil's only triple world champion — had just won the Copa do Brasil and signed New Balance as its new supplier for 2024, and 'the heaviest shirt' is a Brazilian idiom for a club with a heavyweight trophy history.
How it works
Every season, football fans hunt for leaked images of the next kit and brands spend energy trying to contain them. In January 2024, São Paulo FC — Brazil's only triple world champion, fresh off an unprecedented Copa do Brasil title — launched its new 2024 kit with new supplier New Balance. In Brazil, 'a camisa mais pesada' ('the heaviest shirt') is the expression for a club with a towering trophy history.
Instead of fighting the leak culture, LePub São Paulo joined it with a catch. The agency 'leaked' the launch photo itself, but its metadata carried the club's entire history — 93 years of foundations, statistics, top scorers, yearly line-ups and famous episodes such as the 1943 Paulista title — swelling the file to 1.2 terabytes of data.
The photo was impossible to download on ordinary phones and computers, so fans could only pull fragments of the shirt: spoilers that revealed just part of the design. The heavier São Paulo's history, the heavier the file — the leak itself became the demonstration of the brand truth.
The campaign won Best of Discipline for Interactive, Online & Mobile at The One Show 2025 plus a Gold Pencil, and at the Clio Awards 2025 it took a Gold in Branded Entertainment & Content, a Silver in Social Media and a Silver in Creative Commerce — turning a common nuisance, the kit leak, into the launch itself.
Why it lands
- It accepted the leak as cultural fact and inverted it: the harder the file is to steal, the more it proves the club's weight.
- The metadata was the medium — history wasn't a claim in a press release, it was physically embedded in the image fans tried to grab.
- Fans who wanted the design became narrators of the story, posting fragments and frustration that amplified the launch for free.
- The 1.2 TB file gave the campaign a concrete, testable object that reporters and fans could actually experience.
What it did
The launch became one of the most discussed kit stories in Brazilian football: an image impossible to download because the club's own history made it heavy. It won Best of Discipline at The One Show 2025 (Interactive, Online & Mobile) with a Gold Pencil, and a Clio 2025 Gold in Branded Entertainment & Content plus Silvers in Social Media and Creative Commerce.
What you can take
Don't fight the leak: make the leak itself the reveal. Give the launch an obstacle that mirrors the brand truth — the heavier the history, the heavier the file — and the community does the talking.
Since then
Beyond the launch, The Heaviest Jersey became an award-season staple: Best of Discipline (Interactive, Online & Mobile) and a Gold Pencil at The One Show 2025, plus a Clio 2025 Gold in Branded Entertainment & Content with Silvers in Social Media and Creative Commerce. The kit itself carried the same history in its fabric and details, and the campaign became a reference for brands facing the eternal jersey-leak problem.
Sources
- Camisa mais pesada do Brasil: São Paulo inicia campanha de lançamento com a New Balance
- Five agencies in LATAM win Best of Discipline and special awards at The One Show 2025
- LePub triumphs at the Clio Awards 2025 with 32 awards, including 4 Grand Prix and 9 Gold
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