Puma took its cleats to the streets in Toronto last week to promote its sponsorship of the Azzurri, the Italian national soccer team.

The event took place in and around Café Diplomatico in Toronto’s Little Italy, the day of the World Cup qualifying game against Ireland. The restaurant was outfitted with Puma branded pint glasses, pizza boxes and window clings.

Patrons were able to watch the game and participate in a life-size foosball tournament, with passersby able to turn a handle to make the players kick in unison.

“It was great watching people’s reactions to life-size foosball players taking over Little Italy,” said Zak Mroueh, creative director and founder of Zulu Alpha Kilo, the agency behind the event.

“They literally stopped traffic, and to top it off, Italy scored in the last minute to propel them to the World Cup,” he said.

In the days leading up to the game, referees handed out yellow card citations to pedestrians for “ugly shoes” and “jay walking” in downtown locations including Dundas Square.

“We wanted to create a fun, positive, cool vibe that was meant to reflect the attributes of the Puma brand,” said Mroueh.

Though members of the media weren’t notified of the event ahead of time, Citytv and The Score covered the campaign.

The decision not to promote the event to members of the press was strategic, said Mroueh. Puma and Zulu wanted the word to spread organically to reflect the grassroots nature of the brand. 

“By being very creative we were able to stretch the campaign dollars immensely to get noticed,” he said.

In a release, Shelia Roberts, director of marketing for Puma Canada said the “atmosphere was electric.”

“We knew that the game would be exciting, so we wanted to create a guerrilla campaign that would really hype the event and get people to come down and cheer on the Azzurri,” she said.

The event is the first phase of a multimedia campaign leading into the World Cup championship in South Africa next year.