Case over EK88look.nl, een AI driven actie van Redkiwi

EK88look.nl

How we leveraged AI to make a historic football memory personal and scalable

AI driven

At Redkiwi, we believe that standing out is not a coincidence, but something you actively work on. As an AI-driven agency, we continuously experiment with new technology in our own AI Lab, searching for innovative ways to help our clients grow. We proved that this approach bears fruit in the run-up to the World Cup in the USA:

We transformed a symbol of national pride and cultural heritage into a hyper-personalized identity with the AI-driven EK88look.nl.

Results

Visit
https://EK88look.nl
+274,6%

Increase in website traffic

3 million visitors

Everyone wanted a mullet and mustache

552,000 successful requests

Successfully generated images

It wasn't a one-two pass, but a triangle that drove the success behind EK88look.nl

The success of https://ek88look.nl/ lay in the combination of deep emotion, user-friendly UX, and innovative AI technology. Its virality was the direct result of these three elements coming together perfectly:

  1. On one hand, we tapped into deep-rooted cultural heritage. In the Netherlands, the 1988 European Championship is not just a sports memory; it is national nostalgia. The jerseys, the mullets, the mustaches of Gullit and Koeman—everyone recognizes the energy of that legendary year. We didn't just invite people to look at that culture; we used AI to make them a part of it. Instead of just watching '88 Orange, they became '88 Orange for a moment. Or to put it more sharply: ‘we turned a national memory into a personal identity.’ Strategically, that makes it far more interesting than mere personalization or virality. This is about AI-powered cultural participation. Not AI-generated content, but AI-generated participation.
  2. On the other hand, the success was driven by a simple and seamless UX. The front-end of the application was deliberately kept extremely minimalist. Simply: upload a photo, instantly laugh at the result, and share. People don't want to create an account or leave their personal details behind. It was precisely this frictionless experience that made sharing via social channels like WhatsApp and LinkedIn a no-brainer.
  3. Behind that low-barrier front-end ran an innovative and advanced AI architecture. Jens, one of our developers, wrote the base code using 'vibe-coding' in Google AI Studio. The application then sent the uploaded photos—combined with a meticulously crafted prompt of the iconic '88 Euro jersey—to the Nano Banana and Gemini APIs. After testing various providers, this specific combination proved to deliver by far the best and most realistic results. The entire setup was deployed on Cloudflare. In terms of scalability, it was a dream: the platform effortlessly managed a million visitors in two weeks without a single technical hitch. Furthermore, fully in line with our privacy standards, no data was stored or used for training purposes.

The ROI in terms of brand awareness and media value was exceptional, especially with a media buy budget of exactly €0. The campaign started simply: we shared a few transformed photos of colleagues in two group chats with friends. From there, it went completely viral organically.

The site was flooded with backlinks from high-quality platforms. The hype was quickly picked up by RTL Tonight, Het AD, DutchCowboys, Emerce, Adformatie, Scorito, various podcasts, and so on… Together, these accounted for roughly 2 million touchpoints. Furthermore, hundreds of corporate team pages and football clubs received a makeover, and the Redkiwi mullets and mustaches popped up massively across LinkedIn, X, and Instagram.

The campaign's massive online traction translated directly into impressive and measurable growth on our sponsors' channels as well as our own. In a short period, we recorded a staggering 274.6% increase in traffic on our own website. The hard engagement metrics proved that this wasn't just fleeting or low-quality traffic: the number of engaged sessions skyrocketed by 415.1%, backed by a rock-solid engagement rate increase of +12.73%. With this, the Orange hype firmly put Redkiwi on the map for a massive new audience.

Victim of our own success

Going viral also came with a price tag. Every unique AI transformation requires computing power and therefore tokens, which amounted to just under 5 cents per image. With the final counter hitting exactly 552,000 successfully generated images, the Google invoice quickly ticked up to well over €27,500.

A blessing in disguise was Google's hard limit: there was a maximum cap of 50,000 image generations per project, per day. Because we couldn't increase this, the costs remained manageable. At the absolute peak of its virality, the tool was generating 3 to 4 unique images per second for hours on end.

Sponsoring

To avoid abruptly cutting short the enthusiasm brewing across the Netherlands due to rising costs, we approached our clients to get involved. Thanks to the rapid support of brands like Gadero, Live Outdoor Living, and YIM Identity, we were able to keep the website live for two additional weeks. This allowed the project to grow into a truly nationwide campaign that attracted a million visitors. Or better yet: a million people with a smile on their face.

All good things must come to an end

After exactly two weeks, we pulled the plug and took the website offline. The organic peak had been reached, and incurring further production costs would no longer yield significant relevant media reach; in other words, quitting while we were ahead.

To strengthen our brand awareness locally, we leveraged our annual contract for two billboard locations along the Rotterdam ring road. For a full week, we used these billboards to thank everyone for participating in the campaign. The billboards featured our CEO, Jasper Verbunt, sporting his own EK88 look, complete with the iconic mullet and mustache.

All good things must come to an end

After exactly two weeks, we pulled the plug and took the website offline. The organic peak had been reached, and incurring further production costs would no longer yield significant relevant media reach; in other words, quitting while we were ahead.

To strengthen our brand awareness locally, we leveraged our annual contract for two billboard locations along the Rotterdam ring road. For a full week, we used these billboards to thank everyone for participating in the campaign. The billboards featured our CEO, Jasper Verbunt, sporting his own EK88 look, complete with the iconic mullet and mustache.

And we're not stopping just yet... In England, we've only just kicked off ;) https://tenzingnaturalenergy.com/pages/good-energy-will-bring-it-home

P.S. In the meantime, we’ve also spotted a Belgian copycat. But hey, you know what they say: imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. You can only call a campaign truly successful once the copycats start running with it, right?"