• by Larissa Faw , June 26, 2014

Most employees interested in the World Cup have to hide their browsers every time their boss walks by or call in sick in order to support their teams. Havas, on the other hand, is uniting all of its 16,000 employees across Havas Group to watch the World Cup together. 

Employees are encouraged to watch the games from anywhere in the world by using the hashtag: #HavasWorldCup. Each post from Facebook, Twitter, Vine, Google+ and App.net will feed to a tag board that acts as a storyboard to celebrate memorable moments from the event. 

This initiative spans all of the Havas network, including both Havas Media and Havas Creative Group. And Havas Sports + Entertainment is running a bracket competition for everyone in the Havas network, to see who can most accurately predict the correct scores and winners throughout the World Cup.

The reasoning behind this World Cup madness is simple: togetherness, the company says.  "We're a global network, and soccer is the world's sport. We knew that the majority of Havas employees -- especially in countries with a team playing in the World Cup -- were already going to be watching the games, rooting for their favorite teams, talking about the World Cup, and posting tweets and pictures as they watched. So this was a great opportunity to connect people from all across the Havas network around a shared passion." 

Havas is also engaged with the World Cup through a number of clients who are official partners or sponsors, including, through Havas Media, The Coca-Cola Company's Coca-Cola & Powerade brands, Hyundai, Kia, and Adidas, as well as Louis Vuitton, PMU, a French National team sponsor, Aguila, a Colombian National Team sponsor, The Chilean National Football Federation, and Broadcaster Direct TV in Chile, as well as BETC client Crédit Agricole, a French National Team sponsor.

Ultimately the initiative serves as a case study on how Havas and its various agencies are able to work together on one project, per the company. "Both in bringing our people together within agencies, at office watch parties, for example, and in bringing together both sides of Havas’ business, creative and media….the speed and universality of social media have made it even easier to connect all our people around the world in real-time.” New tools help. Instragram didn’t exist during the last World Cup. The initiative runs through July.