BEST BRAND ACTIVATION INVOLVING FOOTBALL
o Axi
At the heart of City Slickers or City Kickers campaign is the quiz, putting City superstars, John Stones, Bernardo Silva and İlkay Gündoğan through their paces and testing their trading knowledge. Using three players who have great comradery and are highly regarded by football fans ensured we created a humorous, light-hearted piece of content that was instantaneously engaging, helping to deliver against our educational objective.
To add some friendly competition between the City players and still wanting to continue to aid the City in the Community Foundation, the winner of the City Slickers or City Kickers quiz would take home $25,000. All of which was then donated back to City in the Community.
o BT
After a year’s postponement, EURO 2020 was set to unite the nation. Yet, the huge increase of online abuse towards football players overshadowed the excitement and became an issue that could no longer be ignored.
While many brands pledged their support, pressuring social media companies to take action, BT as both a national champion and lead partner of the national teams, stepped up to take a bold and challenging stand against it.
Putting its brand purpose – ‘We Connect for Good’ into action, BT formed Hope United – a star-studded team comprised of elite women, para and men’s football players from across the four Home Nations, who’s one goal was to educate the UK on how to tackle online hate.
With an iconic kit, club crest, famous coaches and fan base, Hope United became the nation’s second team last summer and a game-changing campaign that educated millions, with 1 in 4 now more likely to take action and report online hate.
o En2End
Mastercard have been a top sponsor of the UEFA Champions League since 1994. One of Mastercard’s sponsorship rights is to offer children the chance to be a player mascot. This was undeliverable due to the pandemic. Mastercard tasked us with finding a way we could still engage with the children who should have been travelling to Porto for the final of the Champions League 2021 and provide them a money can’t buy experience.
We had the idea of taking the children into the tunnel with the players virtually. Before the event the kids were sent a full technical kit and mascot uniforms. We then set up an LED screen in the player arrival tunnel in the stadium. We had ex Chelsea player Ashley Cole interact with the children & their families before the live show along with a BBC children’s host to make sure they were excited for the players arriving in the tunnel.
Despite COVID, our hybrid delivery solution enabled Mastercard to successfully utilise an exclusive right which would have otherwise gone unused. This activation provided an elevated experience, giving the children an opportunity to interact with some of their footballing heroes and forging a lasting impression.
o Hampshire FA
In 2021, Hampshire FA launched the Hampshire FA Academy with SCL as its designated education provider. The programme offers young people (16-18 years old) a truly unique learning opportunity that combines full-time education with top-class football development opportunities and unparalleled access to industry experience. The aim of the programme is to help students achieve a future career in sport, whether that’s playing professionally, or progressing to other areas of the industry, such as journalism, media, physiotherapy, coaching, refereeing, facility management and more.
The challenge for Hampshire FA’s in-house Brand Lead was to adapt the existing Hampshire FA brand to match the appearance of a professional club and consequently attract new students to the programme based on the truly professional experience that it aims to deliver.
Following a comprehensive research and planning stage, the Brand Lead has been able to create a dynamic brand concept based on high-quality imagery merged with geometric graphic design, often incorporating high-contrasting colours and simple buzz words or symbols to add meaning.
The Academy has been able to use digital content across Twitter and Instagram to quickly establish a youthful and engaging brand identity the remains consistent with the overarching Hampshire FA brand.
o Hatch
Nationwide Building Society and England Football wanted a PR led project that hit its key young family demographic, a group that is often hard to reach through traditional paid media. The campaign needed to open up channels of discussion around kindness, accepting differences and how important it is to respect people, on and off the pitch.
Hatch identified a consistent theme that the coin toss, which starts every football match, is the first moment of respect in every game. It’s a respected symbol of fair chance, but until now, no official coin has ever existed. So, we brought the Coin for Respect to life.
The overall campaign exceeded all expectations and KPIs (+200%) set at the start of the campaign. It was done under challenging and ever-changing circumstances in the height of the Covid-19 pandemic with multiple different touchpoints and stakeholders including Nationwide Building Society, The FA and England Football, media, families of entrants and grassroots football clubs. Most importantly, it has left a lasting legacy on grassroots football with 15,000 referees in the UK using these coins week in week out.
o La Liga
El Clasico is the most followed club match in the world and at LaLiga we sought to position it as a global entertainment event. With this strategy, we provided the event with its own brand identity and consistency to increase its impact and recognition internationally.
The launch of the new identity included activations in offline media: merchandising, launches on screens, box signs and banners in the El Corte Ingles shopping centre in Madrid, implementation of the identity on television and other media: social media using the look & feel of the brand identity in all communications and branded content actions, among others; and in owned media: LaLiga apps, national and international broadcasters, social media, ambassadors, etc.
On the other hand, to roll out this new identity and continue to make the match relevant, international activations were carried out in Indonesia, India, China, Colombia, Mexico and South Africa, raising awareness of the new identity with teaser actions and high-impact events.
Finally, with this strategy, we managed to reach both the general public and the younger target, as well as reaching the female target with a high media impact totalling over €14 million.
o Tecno Mobile and Manchester City with AND THE NEW
Tecno Mobile, Official Partner of Manchester City, approached AND THE NEW to help them better engage and convert their global target audience – emerging middle classes in emerging markets – through the power of football.
#AnnounceYourself is a fully-integrated digital campaign designed to give global fans the chance to experience what it’s like to sign for Man City, score the winning penalty at the Etihad, become a legend, and announce themselves to the world! With targeted distribution across paid social, organic social, email, geo-targeted website takeovers and a first in Premier League marketing – a web-based augmented reality fan and penalty shootout gamified experience used to win the ultimate VIP trip to Manchester City – Tecno were able to show off their aspirational and innovative brand values and their core message of ‘Stop At Nothing’ whilst giving the opportunity to fans outside of Europe, unlikely to visit Manchester soon due to the hangover from COVID, to go deeper into the team they love.
The campaign surpassed all target KPIs within the first week and has achieved over 30 million impressions, over 448,500 total in-experience minutes, a 19.37% cross-platform engagement rate, and a 97.1% positive brand sentiment.
