Best New Player/Contract Signing Reveal Campaign
WINNER
Tottenham Hotspur FC
In a summer of exciting announcements during Jose Mourinho’s first pre-season transfer window in charge, the Club’s digital team overhauled it’s existing strategy to execute a range of innovative transfer campaigns across our social media channels. We were lead by fan sentiment to take ownership of some contentious topics of discussion and push the boundaries in terms of access to shape our style and tone of voice.
A tongue-in-cheek approach for the signings of Matt Doherty, Carlos Vinicius and Joe Rodon was followed by our cross-platform #BaleIsBack campaign to document the much anticipated return of club legend, Gareth Bale.
SILVER
Everton FC
Everton’s signing of James Rodriguez in September 2020 – the 8th biggest social media sports star on earth – presented the Club with an unprecedented opportunity to accelerate its growth across the Americas and worldwide – but it needed to act quickly and decisively across three continents.
Due to the pandemic, the Club led with digital and social, supported by inspiring on-the- ground, headline-grabbing visual activations in New York, Miami, Bogota and Rodriguez’s new home town of Liverpool, linking the territories and telling the story of the Club’s ambition and wider international strategy.
The activity went viral on social media, galvanising Evertonians – old and new – and the wider footballing community to participate in meaningful, memorable and authentic engagement with the Club and each other, illustrating Everton’s identity as The People’s Club. New Spanish-language social media channels were launched and have seen significant growth built on the effective merging of local nuances and Everton values.
The announcement and subsequent ‘blue wave’ on the ground and social media activity resonated on an international scale, surpassing all targets. Just 48 hours after the announcement, the coordinated physical, digital and social media activity had reached more than 500 million people globally.
BRONZE
Arsenal FC
It’s been a turbulent time for everyone in the midst of a pandemic and football isn’t immune to this. We’ve been fortunate to play matches, but we’ve been missing the essential ingredient that makes our game so special: the fans.
So when our club captain Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was poised to sign a new three-year contract, we wanted to mark the moment with our fans in a special way.
On 15 September 2020, Auba personally shared the news of his new contract on Arsenal’s social media channels from Emirates Stadium to a live audience of more than quarter of a million fans across Instagram Live, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, the Arsenal app and Arsenal.com.
It was crucial to Auba that his vibrant personality and his social media habits were captured authentically. Thanks to his commitment to making this happen, the hard work and creativity from some brilliant people and the support of Instagram, we created a memorable moment of excitement for our fans that we could all share together.
In total, more than 3.2 million people have watched the announcement across live and on-demand platforms.
