Clients
Topper and Mashin: in Argentine sport since 2008
Mashin has worked with Topper since 2008, when it started building its digital strategy. It is one of the agency's longest relationships and covers social media, campaigns and the brand's three sports.
The relationship with Topper is also the one that taught Mashin the most about one thing: sport is not communicated from the product, but from what people feel when they play, when they cheer and when they belong.
2009
Hacelo por Estudiantes
Mashin's first big initiative with Topper came before the final of the Copa Libertadores. Estudiantes de La Plata, who wore Topper kit, were going to play it in Brazil.
Most fans could not travel. So instead of talking to them about the match, Mashin proposed something else: making a promise. What were you willing to do if Estudiantes became champions?
More than 10,000 promises came in.
Estudiantes won the title, and that is when the second part of the campaign began, the real one: documenting the fans keeping the promises they had made. More than 1,000 came back with the video of their promise kept.
The campaign did not rely on the shirt or the product. It relied on something that goes through any fan's head before a final, and turned it into a collective archive of what people do when their team wins.
Hacelo por Estudiantes (Topper, Argentina and Chile, July 10 to 30, 2009) got coverage on Telenoche (Canal 13) and on more than 43,000 web pages, and won Gold at the IAB Argentina Awards for the Best Interactive Campaigns 2009, presented on April 14, 2010, plus the Diente de Plata from the Círculo de Creativos Argentinos. Mashin developed it when it still operated under the name Cero Negativo, together with the audiovisual partner Paprika.
The case video shows the full campaign.
Later
The brand growing
From then on, Mashin worked with Topper on practically every front.
- Social platforms. Developing its channels as new networks and new ways of talking with the sports community appeared.
- Store openings. Communicating the move into physical retail, which calls for a different logic than digital.
- Annual campaigns. Back to school and collection launches, two moments with their own rules: one set by the school calendar, the other by the product's rhythm.
- The sports. Football, running and rugby. Three disciplines with cultures that do not resemble each other, with audiences that do not overlap and with codes that cannot be swapped.
- The online store. Communicating the brand's own direct sales channel.
- Club communities. Mashin managed for Topper the social media communities of clubs the brand outfitted, such as Vélez Sarsfield, Estudiantes de La Plata and Newell's Old Boys.
Today
Volvamos a los Clubes
Mashin's most recent initiative with Topper puts value back on the role of neighborhood clubs in Argentina as the engine of amateur sport.
Clubs are where everything starts. Where someone plays for the first time, where you learn to lose, where a dirt pitch holds up an entire neighborhood. They are emotional and sporting infrastructure at the same time, and they are almost never at the center of the conversation.
For a brand born in Argentine sport, talking about the clubs is no choice of topic: it is going back to where it comes from. The alternative Mashin evaluated and ruled out was a traditional advertising campaign with fictional stories: instead of saying that Topper is a close and real brand, Topper did it.
Volvamos a los Clubes (Topper, Argentina, January 2022 to August 2025): Topper equipped 10 neighborhood clubs across the country, in places such as Bariloche, Cipolletti, Rosario, Chapadmalal, CABA, Jujuy, Córdoba, La Plata and Tucumán, and Mashin, together with the partner Un Fueguito, documented their recovery in 10 short films published on YouTube. Each club has around 2 courts and draws about 1,500 young people.
The campaign reached more than 11 million profiles on Instagram, added more than 20,000 interactions and 20 press articles in outlets such as Olé, La Nación, Clarín, Infobae and Página/12. It won third place in Social Sustainability at the 2023 Eikon Awards.