Title	IT PAYS TO EXPERIMENT
Brand	THE SUN - NEWS UK
Product/Service	DREAM TEAM
Category	A02. Data-Driven Targeting
Entrant	PULSE CREATIVE London, UNITED KINGDOM
Idea Creation	PULSE CREATIVE London, UNITED KINGDOM
Media Placement	PULSE CREATIVE London, UNITED KINGDOM
PR	PULSE CREATIVE London, UNITED KINGDOM
Production	PULSE CREATIVE London, UNITED KINGDOM

Name	Company	Position
Sam Mellis, Rob Pritchard-Jones, Richard Kenyon, Nigel Webb	Pulse Creative	Art Director, Copywriter, Creative Director, Creative Director
Will Martin	News UK
Charlotte Pike	News UK
Kate Bird	News UK
David Robinson	News UK
Claire Gribben	News UK
Robbie Williams	News UK
Parjeev Kalirai	News UK
Joanna Niemiec	News UK
Greg Halfacre	News UK
Alex Carapiet	News UK
Harry Hayden	News UK
Mark Hudson	News UK
Josh Clarke	News UK
Keith Drewrey	Pulse Creative
Alex Parr	Pulse Creative
Natalie Pickering	Pulse Creative
Matt Thomas	Pulse Creative
Yannis Fairfield	Wunderman UK
Michael Maxwell	Wunderman UK
Mark Wake
Michael Tredway

The Campaign

We devised the cheeky line “It pays to experiment” and, using well-known club nicknames, we showed innuendo-laden scenarios of fans “experimenting” with unfamiliar players. Central to the campaign was a personalised video sent to 200,000 Dream Teamers, using data – their team and league names, results, etc – culled from last year. We knew however that a straight campaign wouldn’t cut it for our cheeky banter-loving base. We needed a killer insight upon which to build the creative. This insight again emerged from last season’s data. Everybody marvelled at how Leicester City had run away with the title. But we saw how only 0.19% of Dream Teamers had spotted Vardy’s potential at the beginning – and how he would outstrip better-known footballers such as Rooney and Hazard. It was no longer enough to pick celebrated strikers and defenders and then sit back as they accumulated points. We would engage our base with the proposition: It pays to be brave.

We surpassed our target of 1 million sign-ups. The combination of personalised, segmented communications, built on solid direct principles and coupled with a strong creative proposition proved unbeatable. Email was responsible for driving 23% of all acquisitions, and was the highest performing channel in the integrated campaign. Personalised communications outperformed the controls by more than 115% in terms of conversion. Our target was 1 million sign-ups. We got 1,022,634. Although the basic game is free to play, 134,001 players were so taken with the new season concept that they signed up to pay-to-play leagues, at £2 a head. A further 92,920 entered the cash mini-leagues. These people were then targeted with betting offers. The total revenue from the campaign is estimated at £3,449,000

We love creating playful experiences that enable new perspectives and positive change. Using this approach, our campaign focused on pulling data insights from last year’s Dream Team campaign, using these to devise a comprehensive email programme. We knew email would be a key acquisition channel for Dream Team, so we immediately set about analysing; response drivers, unsubscribe triggers, segment value, personalisation opportunities and more. These insights, combined with our overarching new creative concept for Dream Team made the campaign a success story, and the season's only just begun.

We knew email would be a key acquisition channel Dream Team, so we immediately set about analysing last year’s campaign assessing; response drivers, unsubscribe triggers, segment value, personalisation opportunities and more. Within this data we found amongst other insights: • A high value segment that delivered 11 x more ROI than the other groups. • Performance in the game last year was a key driver of propensity to sign up • Sign-ups increased exponentially the closer we get to season kick off From these insights we devised a comprehensive email programme comprising of more than 120 personalised content elements, packaged into just twelve sends over a four week period - all meticulously choreographed to minimize unsubscribes. We carefully plotted the customer journey, managing prospects through acquisition into an incentivised member-get-member programme designed to bolster the acquisition effort.