Case Study: Orange AFCON 2025 Project — AI Avatars & Engagement

Context & Challenges: Activating fans for the AFCON 2025

For the Africa Cup of Nations hosted in Morocco, Orange wanted to activate football fans across Africa in an unprecedented and engaging way. The goal was to go beyond classic brand advertising content by offering a personal, fun, and highly shareable experience directly inside the Maxit super-app.

Key strategic pillars defined by PiNGs:

Highly engaging: An interactive experience focused on fun and personal identification.
Easy to access: Immediate accessibility without installing a third-party app (integrated via WebView).
Massively scalable: An infrastructure capable of handling millions of visits with high peak loads.
Ecosystem integration: Seamless integration within the brand's native ecosystem.

The Solution: 3-Steps Avatar Generator

PiNGs designed and deployed a user flow optimized in three simple steps, leveraging generative artificial intelligence architectures to create premium 3D avatars (Pixar style):

Step 1

Selfie Upload

The user uploads a selfie from their gallery or takes a photo in real-time.

Step 2

Customization

Choose the supporter jersey, country, and select facial expression.

Step 3

AI Generation

Instant generation of the Pixar-style avatar ready to share.

A Multi-country & Multi-lingual Experience (RTL & LTR)

The user interface automatically adapts to the user's language (French, English, and Arabic with full Right-to-Left RTL support) while strictly following the branding guidelines and design system of Orange Middle East Africa (MEA).

Customization Interface

AR (RTL)

Final 3D Avatar Result

High-definition 3D rendering of a stylized supporter, optimized for instant social media sharing.

International deployment & Infrastructure robustness

The WebView application was deployed across more than 20 African countries, natively integrated within Orange's Maxit super-app. To handle the massive influx of image generation requests, PiNGs engineered an auto-scaling cloud architecture capable of handling over 2,275 avatar generations per hour and traffic peaks reaching 25,000 peak visits per hour.

Results and performances of the Orange AFCON 2025 project

Value Creation: ROI and First-Party Data

This project demonstrates the ROI of a personalized experience at scale, combining marketing performance, emotional brand connection, and intelligent commercial opportunities:

Growth & Reach

Drives app downloads and generates organic distribution through user-created social sharing.

Brand Impact

Positions the brand as innovative and builds emotional attachment through "I made this" moments.

Data & Monetization

Captures first-party preference signals (selected jerseys and countries) to power highly targeted CRM campaigns.

Brand Visibility

Creates opportunities to integrate branded templates, sponsored frames, or offer premium feature upgrades.

Why This Works

Personal & social by design

Personalized avatars drive sharing since the content is personal and social by design, naturally aligned with massive sports events (AFCON).

Immediate adoption

Adoption is immediate since the WebView is embedded directly in the ecosystem, removing any download friction.

Multi-country localization

Designed to serve 20+ countries and localized themes, jerseys, and visual preferences seamlessly.

"The combination of generative AI and WebView accessibility allowed Orange to turn their AFCON 2025 sponsorship into a viral and engaging user experience."