BEST BRAND ACTIVATION INVOLVING SPORT
ADMIRAL Sport Show – ML Marketing
Introducing ML Marketing, the game-changer in the world of social media! As a full-service agency with a passion for digital communication, we’re ready to conquer the Sports Business Awards 2023 in the UK Buckle up for a thrilling ride through our story of success! Since 2015, ML Marketing has been on a mission to revolutionize the way brands engage with their audiences With our headquarters in Vienna and operations spanning Lucerne, Budapest, and Düsseldorf, we’ve built a powerhouse team of 50 experts dedicated to shaping the digital landscape When it comes to our impressive clientele, we’ve worked with the crème de la crème of the sports industry From the Austrian Football League to the Football Swiss League, the European Handball Federation to ORF Sport, and the renowned ADMIRAL Sportwetten, we’ve left an indelible mark on the sports world Speaking of ADMIRAL Sportwetten, let’s dive into their captivating journey They sought our expertise to elevate their digital presence to new heights As the main sponsor of the Austrian Football Bundesliga and the Austrian 2nd League, ADMIRAL Sportwetten faced unique challenges during the pandemic-stricken 2020/21 football season This Case details everything about our project and we hope we’re lucky enough to win.
Gatorade x Manchester City – ‘Everyday Goals’
Gatorade activated their partnership with Manchester City over the 22/23 season to help promote their new positioning as a drink ‘for all’ not just elite athletes. The objective of the activation was to democratise Gatorade by embracing current consumer perceptions of the brand and draw attention.
In response, a 3-episode series was created called ‘Everyday Goals’, which explored different aspects of Man City players training routines. Each episode was tailored around three key areas – ‘nutrition’, ‘pre-activation’ and ‘on the pitch’ and was hosted by a relatable influencer to ensure the learnings from the series could be simplified and incorporated into the ‘everyday athletes’ own fitness routines.
The organic and paid media strategy placed the content into contextual environments where Gatorade’s audience typically consumed sport and fitness content in both long and short form, whilst also provoking editorial credibility with organic posts across Man City channels. There was also a focus on the environmental impact of the campaign to understand the emissions and active attention across our paid media strategy.
The results of the campaign significantly exceeded the KPIs set, overachieving 400% on impressions, 350% on views and outperforming the Scope 3 benchmark for emissions per impression by 0.17%.
International Equestrian Federation and Longines – #MyDreamJump – Redtorch
The aim of this brand campaign was to offer the Federation Equestre Internationale’s headline sponsor Longines – a luxury watchmaker – more brand awareness within the equestrian community.
Research showed the FEI’s fanbase was split into segments: fans of elite competition, and horse lovers who don’t follow specific events.
For significant audience uplift, horse lovers needed targeting while still engaging hardcore fans. We recognised a commonality was that all equestrians dream of experiencing the biggest competitions. We sought to tap into this fantasy, maximising Longines’ unique access to FEI competitions.
The user-generated campaign encouraged people to design their dream jump for the Longines FEI Jumping World Cup Final. One winner would have theirs brought to life and win a VIP experience to watch it in action.
The beauty of #MyDreamJump was inclusivity, anyone with an idea could enter. Mirroring the fact that equestrian is a sport for all ages/genders/backgrounds. It seamlessly transcended from screen to reality, mixing digital (social media/website) and traditional (OOH, onsite event activations) marketing techniques.
630 designs were submitted despite a complex barrier to entry. Alongside over-achieving on all its KPIs, the ultimate result was making a horse-mad 13-year-old’s dream come true.
Standard Chartered – Liverpool Football Club
Standard Chartered’s has been Liverpool FC’s partner since 2010 and the partnership has been extended to the end of the 2026-27 football season, this will take the partnership to 17 seasons overall.
The Fans of Fans piece aimed to drive awareness and registration for Standard Chartered Rewards, the download and adoption of the Standard Chartered Bank app in key markets and fan participation in competitions organised by Standard Chartered in their key markets.
We aimed to do this by capitalising on the opportunities to win ‘money-can’t-buy’ and ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ experiences that are available through Standard Chartered’s partnership with the club.
Splitting into pairs, Matip and Van Dijk, and Salah and Tsimikas drove around the city searching for impromptu moments to share with supporters. The players handed out hundreds of special gifts, chatted with Reds young and old, posed for photographs, and even took part in spontaneous kickabouts.
Matip, Salah, Tsimikas and Van Dijk’s involvement was followed by LFC Women’s Rachel Furness, Missy Bo Kearns and Rachael Laws and former Reds Mark Lawrenson and Steve McMahon.
TOCA Social
TOCA Social – the world’s first interactive football and dining experience in London’s iconic The O2, combining immersive football-based games and world class food and drink – and Harry Kane came together with the help of sports marketing experts, Ten Toes, to produce ‘The Record Breaker’ burger.
With Harry an ambassador of, and investor in, the brand, TOCA Social wanted to mark the occasion of the England captain becoming his country’s all-time leading goalscorer, and to do so they worked with Harry to devise his perfect burger.
With 54% – the number of goals scored to break the record – of profits from every sale at the venue going to the Harry Kane Foundation, not only did the campaign drive incredible brand awareness and hit objectives for TOCA Social, but it also provided a boost for Harry’s Foundation on their mission to transform a generation’s thinking around mental health.
For a brand activation involving sport, look no further for a best-in-class execution which propelled the brand into the spotlight and activated a partnership in a meaningful way to deliver outstanding ROI.
Vitality T20 Blast ‘Win a Car’ – The Space Between
Vitality Car launched in 2022 to incentivise and reward good driving, an extension to Vitality’s ‘Shared Value’ insurance model. The Vitality Blast was used to generate awareness of Vitality Car and create a data pool of potential customers.
To generate awareness of Vitality’s new insurance product, Vitality Car, we developed an activation that gave fans the opportunity to ‘Win a Car’, via an in-game competition mechanic. The ‘Win a Car’ activation saw sections of the boundary ropes re-branded with ‘targets’ carrying the promotion messages. Fans were asked to predict which teams would have the best ‘driving’ during the competition and hit the targets the most.
Open to both fans in the stadium and at home, we did a multi-channel communications push using CRM, social and digital inventory across Vitality & ECB channels, generating 2M+ impressions with limited media spend.
Together with remote-control cars delivering the match ball before each innings and strong promotion across multiple channels, we exceeded our awareness target by 4%, resulting in 38K new leads and an ROI of 1220%.
