BEST SPORTS MARKETING INITIATIVE

Ashes, Two Ashes – MATTA & ECB

Ashes, Two Ashes’ has made history as the ECB’s first joint ticket sales campaign for an England Men’s and Women’s Ashes series.
For the first time, the men’s and women’s international scheduling for 2023 was conducted at the same time, allowing England women’s fixtures to be prioritised alongside England men’s to drive parity at the elite level and to allow optimisation of the women’s schedule for high attendance growth, including some of the most iconic grounds.
This created the opportunity to synchronise the on-sale process so that, for the first time, a joint campaign could be created, driving parity in one of sport’s greatest rivalries and responding to the rapidly increasing appetite for women’s elite sport.
The campaign marks a permanent change in the way England women’s cricket is prioritised and marketed, and has resulted in a multitude of sales and attendance records being broken this summer, as England fans rallied together to show their full support for the Women’s and Men’s teams in equal measure.

FA Women’s Football Weekend – The Space Between

The ‘Pick a Pride’ campaign was a bold and unapologetic campaign that compelled casual football fans to show up and follow a club for the Women’s Football Weekend.

Despite the Lionesses’ incredible success at the Women’s 2022 Euros, interest in the sport hadn’t yet translated into the women’s domestic leagues – the Barclay’s Women’s Super League and Barclay’s Championship.

Our challenge was to use Women’s Football Weekend to demonstrate the excitement and quality of the women’s leagues.

The integrated campaign created customised content for clubs, delivered a wide scale OOH campaign in the hometowns of BWSL fixtures, and illuminated buildings in derby cities with team colours, using social media polls for fans to pick the teams’ colour they wanted to see. Finally, influencers were used to showcase their experience of the games to our target audiences.

The results broke all records for Women’s Football Weekend. The campaign achieved the highest peak viewership across Sky matches, with a 95% increase from the previous year. Attendance across BWSL matches soared by 210%, setting records for Everton, Spurs, and a sold-out match between Man City and Chelsea.

Hyderabad Black Hawks – The Hype Night – Havas Play India – Havas Media

Volleyball is one of the most practiced sports in schools. However, a lack of investment in the elite game has held it back. Prime Volleyball took the mantle to change this by introducing a nation-wide league. But the Hyderabad Black Hawks’ fans were still not volleying with the idea.
So, we had to get their attention!
Get them excited. Get them cheering by making the Hyderabad Black Hawks the most talked about team in the league.
We had to shed some light on this game. So, we decided to do the exact opposite thing.
TURN THE LIGHTS OFF!

Introducing HYPE NIGHT – A one-night showstopping volleyball experience where the game was played in the dark.
India’s First Blackout Volleyball experience. Neon balls. Neon costumes. Neon bands. A visual
spectacle unlike any other. Fans were seated in a completely dark stadium, to witness the first-ever UV and LED-led showdown. The audience elevated the experience with glowing headbands and wristbands.
2000+ people attended the Hype Night event.
Instagram followers grew 400%. Impressions went up by 500k+.
The new-found passion for the game resulted in Hyderabad attracting the highest viewership across all cities, marking the beginning of a Volleyball revolution for the city.

MySkate App – Empowering Skateboarding Communities and Enriching the Lives of Skateboarders – Skateboard GB

SBGB’S MySkate app continues to demonstrate it’s innovation and usefulness to the British skateboarding community, MySkate is now established as the UK’s Number 1 Skateboarding App. SBGB launched MySkate in recognition that there was an opportunity to further deliver on the core principle of SBGB; helping British skateboarders ‘Skate More, Skate Better’.

The innovative functionality and intuitive user experience has seen MySkate become the go-to resource for skateboarders who want to discover and map new places to skate, find local skateboard shops and events, and have fun skateboarding in diverse communities.

MySkate’s unique gamification promotes community through fun competition with friends; by creating an engaging interactive version of the classic game S.K.A.T.E. Additional developments has seen MySkate continue to evolve and offer innovative features for skateboarders, including the option for users to map their favourite street skateboarding spots in their personal accounts.

The biggest continual innovation of MySkate is the ability for users to easily find skateparks and skate spots they would like to visit, a resource which has historically been non-existent or inconsistent. This promotes travel and domestic tourism.

Peroni Nastro Azzurro 0.0% x Aston Martin Formula 1™ Team – CSM Sport & Entertainment, & Trouble Maker

Formula 1 is a global sporting phenomenon and one that is acclaimed for the experience it delivers for fans at Grands Prix across the globe. However, despite a global audience exceeding 1.5Bn, recent research confirmed that only a small portion of this fanbase actually ever have the chance to attend and experience a race first-hand.
This insight, alongside the Peroni Nastro Azzurro 0.0% ambition to connect and engage with fans of Aston Martin Formula 1™ team, and enable them to Feel The Passion Inside, informed the successful city-based fan engagement activation – Il Pitstop.
Designed to bring fans in the city closer to the team and the sport, whilst driving trial for Peroni Nastro Azzurro’s new 0.0% product, the multi-sensory experience featured four key elements;
1) A taste of Peroni Nastro Azzurro 0.0%
2) A close up view of the replica Aston Martin F1® Team AMR22 car
3) Unheard sounds of the garage and team radio
4) A wheel change pitstop challenge competition
Visiting 12 cities across Europe in 2022, the activation was well received by Aston Martin Formula 1® Team fans, and the wider Formula 1 fan base, resulting in a further iteration of the Il Pitstop tour in 2023.

Taking Basketball to a Global Fanbase – Euroleague Basketball and UNRVLD

Euroleague Basketball is a sports and entertainment business that runs the top European professional basketball competitions. Digital experience and technology agency, UNRVLD, is working on a digital transformation programme to revitalise the online presence of Turkish Airlines EuroLeague, the BKT EuroCup and the Adidas Next Generation Tournament with brand-new competition websites.

Together we are taking basketball to a global fanbase with a connected, multi-site digital platform which requires specialists across all disciplines; from Digital Strategists to Solutions Architects to UX Designers.

The Red Roses & The RFU – Fifty Technology

Fifty provides ID-free targeting, using social data to identify clusters of people based on their interests and build a contextual map of where they can be found across digital inventory. The Rugby Football Union (RFU) represents England national rugby teams, including the women’s national team The Red Roses. The RFU approached Fifty with a new challenge to increase awareness of The Red Roses during their participation in the New Zealand World Cup.

Our talent and technology was enlisted to dissect the current audiences of rugby and women’s sport for more precise targeting, as well as uncovering new growth audiences based on the recent publicity women’s sport was receiving from the Lionesses’ Euros victory. Fifty was able to map out the entire landscape of women’s sports audiences and pinpoint 2 core and 3 growth areas that would be of high-interest to the RFU, including Gen Z and multisport fans. We utilised our granular knowledge of these audiences to understand where and how to target for maximised results.