A fun, statistics-based ‘identify the player’ challenge developed to engage fans by expanding their knowledge of the team thus bringing to life how SAP supports Manchester City and therefore supports supporters’ team passions: an approach aimed to changing global fan (and public) awareness and perception of SAP.
Territory: UK/Global
Agency: Momentum Worldwide
Objectives
This stat-led fan engagement campaign, which ran at the end of the 2017/2018 Premier League season, was part of SAP’s wider marketing mix which aimed to deliver its umbrella ambition is to become a ‘Top 10 Most Valuable Global Brand’.
But there is a key barrier to this objective: SAP is an IT business-to-business service provider and thus is not primarily a public facing brand – so the wider public either aren’t aware of the business or don’t know what it does.
Thus, to be recognized as a leading global brand by the public, SAP shifted some of its marketing to consumer facing initiatives – to engage a wider, general audience some of whom may influence key IT decision makers in the future.
The partnership with Manchester City was a key pillar in this project: a high profile consumer facing organization which requires its innovative technology services and is a route to humanize the SAP brand.
SAP primarily partnered with Manchester City to empowering the team through data collection and analysis both on and off the pitch and the ‘Who’s The Blue?’ campaign aimed to bring this to life and to engage the club’s global fan base.
Leveraging the insight that an increasing number of fans have an appetite for football statistics, the initiative set out to use its City data to help fans worldwide get closer to the team and the game and leverage the players’ international popularity to humanise the SAP brand.
Specific objectives included:
> Driving SAP brand awareness among fans by reaching 10 million supporters globally (including 500,000 in key SAP market China).
> Generate 85% positive sentiment among Manchester City fans
Activation
SAP activated its partnership with Manchester City, a five-year sponsorship running between July 2015 and June 2020, through #WhosTheBlue: a 10-day social campaign in May 2018 targeting the club’s global fan base through a series of statistics-based videos fronted by four players showing off their skills whilst disguised in full-body morphsuits.
Timed to coincide with the end of Manchester City’s victorious 2017/2018 Premier League season, the campaign was developed after a research phase seeking to understand fan needs/wants and cost efficiencies which led the team to reach its global target audience via ‘authentic’ football-focused shareable content on major social platforms.
View the campaign wrap video here.
A series of 11 videos over seven days challenged viewers to identify the disguised players with the help of their individual stats.
Participation was incentivized through club-related prizes and by playing on football fans’ competitive and communal natures.
The social campaign spanned player appearances, posts on SAP’s and Manchester City’s social channels (including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, plus Miaopai and Weibo) and three Man City website takeovers.
With an additional paid media strand targeting specific geographical audiences.
The work kicked-off through a teaser and a launch video designed to build intrigue and interest and the habit of returning to the platform each day to find new content.
This was followed the 9am daily posting of each disguised player skills videos followed by a 5pm reveal spot.
https://www.facebook.com/mancity/videos/10160846153075455/
The campaign concluded with a behind-the-scenes style video of players having fun fooling around.
Outcome
According to the brand and the agency, the campaign reached more 45.3 million fans and drove more than 11m global views (including around 1 million social views in China alone).
The activation generated:
> 5m impressions
> 3m reach
> 6m video views
> 2m engagements
> 91% positive sentiment
> £1m in media/PR exposure
> 3% increase in followers across SAP Sports social channels
> €610,664.70 Return On Ad Spend
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