Title	IT PAYS TO EXPERIMENT
Brand	THE SUN - NEWS UK
Product/Service	DREAM TEAM
Category	C03. Use of Social Platforms
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	Wunderman UK	Are 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

Fantasy managers usually pick famous names from big teams and watch the points roll in. But last season was different. Outsiders Leicester City lifted the League trophy, turning all assumptions upside down. And if this season is anything like last – fortune would favour the brave. 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.

Creative Execution

We encouraged our audience to consider experimenting with their footballers. Using well-known nicknames of Premier League clubs we devised some innuendo-laden scenarios, including “SLIP A TOFFEE IN THERE” (ie, pick an Everton player) and “TRY IT WITH A SWAN” (ie, select a Swansea player). At the heart of it all was a personalised video sent to 200,000 of our most important audience, the league chairmen. We filled the video with details completely unique to them, including their surname, team and league name and overall score, then set them the challenge to beat it this year. Chairmen are our biggest recruitment tool, so it was important that the video was widely shared. Through social we invited Chairmen to a special pub quiz with Premier League legends (including players such as Tony Adams, Teddy Sheringham and Paul Merson).

Results

Our target was 1 million sign-ups which we surpassed. In social, we also reached 2 million people organically in our own channels, and a further 10 million via our influencers and partners, and through content seeding. Although the basic game is free to play, 170,000 players were so taken with the new season concept that they signed up to the £250K Season League, at £2 a head.

Social media is all about community participation, and with our Dream Team community stronger than ever it was the perfect place to target our most loyal fans. Our fans highly engage with our irreverent humour, so getting them to share our content is key to our campaign. This expands our reach, targeting a new, wider reaching audience.

In the face of increasing competition, Dream Team had to retain players from last year – and pick up new ones. The Dream Team community is known for its irreverent banter. We needed an angle for the new season’s game that would resonate with the fans who enjoyed the humour and robust exchanges on the DreamTeamFC site. Our insight emerged from last season’s data. Everybody marvelled at how Leicester City had made the early running, and had ended up trouncing the bigger, more famous clubs. But we saw how only 0.19% of Dream Teamers last year had spotted Jamie Vardy’s potential at the beginning – and how he would outstrip better-known footballers such as Rooney and Hazard. Clearly it was no longer enough to pick celebrated strikers and defenders and then sit back as they accumulated points for your team. Now, more than ever, it paid to be brave.