Premiership Rugby works with Taylor Herring and VCCP Media on giant Twickenham turf art piece to spearhead social campaign seeking to promote the league’s long awaited restart.
Objective:
Gallagher Premiership Rugby briefed agency Taylor Herring to create a campaign to promote the season re-start and drive awareness and excitement amongst fans.
Activation:
The agency’s solution to Gallagher Premiership Rugby’s challenge was a campaign called #RugbyRestart spearheaded by commissioning artists to create UK’s biggest painting on the turf at Twickenham Stadium.
Three rugby icons – Harlequins’ Joe Marler, Saracens’ Maro Itoje and Sale Sharks’ Rugby World Cup winner Faf de Klerk – all currently playing in the league were immortalised on the pitch in the giant physical art stunt which aimed to fuel social sharing.
After more than 100 hours of planning – including writing a computer program to generate the precise measurements needed to create the artwork to the exact scale of the stadium – a team of eight artists took more than a day to paint the on-pitch portraits
The image covers almost all of the 7,000 square metre Twickenham pitch and was created using a grid comprised of 13,420 elements with each line of paint being just 6 inches wide.
A total of 1280 litres of biodegradable pitch marker paint were used for the elaborate creation, while drones were used to capture the final image of the turf rugby stars.
The painting was the lead content piece for a social campaign seeking to build excitement around the sports return and, with no fans allowed in stadiums, to drive viewing on broadcast partner BT Sport.
Developed with agencies Taylor Herring and VCCP Media, who worked alongside the league’s in-house marketing team, the work promotes the 14 August restart of Gallagher Premiership Rugby on BT Sport.
The strategy was to drive attention around the through visually engaging social formats to build excitement for matches starting again and the message was shared via paid social across Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
24 hours to go until the fun begins
The wait is almost over for rugby to get back on the pitch!
What are you looking forward to most about the return of the #GallagherPrem? #RugbyRestart pic.twitter.com/j71KOpNb60
— Premiership Rugby (@premrugby) August 13, 2020
In addition to the art itself and the linked social media assets, the campaign also saw a series of media interviews with key players placed across the country.
Giant pitch portrait of Premiership Rugby stars unveiled at Twickenham to mark long-awaited restart of the season. from Taylor Herring on Vimeo.
Bukky Moemeke, marketing manager at Premiership Rugby, said: “At Premiership Rugby, we are just so excited to have live action returning this weekend. The players are raring to go and it will be an incredible spectacle to see the teams competing for the Gallagher Premiership title once again’’
Nick Baum, non-executive director, VCCP Media added: “Premiership Rugby are highly ambitious in their goals to grow the game and it’s great for VCCP to work with a like-minded, challenger brand. Through this hyper targeted campaign, we’re delighted to be playing our part in announcing the comeback of Premiership Rugby and to build excitement through a range of engaging digital ad formats’’
Comment:
Due to Covid-19 pandemic, the Premiership Rugby season – like so many other sports – was brought to an abrupt halt in mid-March and after a long wait games are restarting on Friday 14 August and this campaign aims to make sure everyone knows that league is back in action.
The giant art work route not only generates plenty of striking and socially sharable imagery, but its world record breaking size also offers an easy media sub story around the restart.
Smart!
Links:
Premiership Rugby
https://www.premiershiprugby.com/
https://www.facebook.com/PremiershipRugby
https://www.instagram.com/premrugby/
https://www.tiktok.com/@premrugby
https://www.youtube.com/user/PremiershipRugby
Taylor Herring
https://www.taylorherring.com/
VCCP Media
https://www.vccp.com/en-gb/capabilities/media
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