| Title | IT PAYS TO EXPERIMENT |
| Brand | THE SUN - NEWS UK |
| Product/Service | DREAM TEAM |
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Entrant
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PULSE CREATIVE London, UNITED KINGDOM
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Idea Creation
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PULSE CREATIVE London, UNITED KINGDOM
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Media Placement
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PULSE CREATIVE London, UNITED KINGDOM
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PR
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PULSE CREATIVE London, UNITED KINGDOM
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Production
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PULSE CREATIVE London, UNITED KINGDOM
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Credits
| Sam Mellis, Rob Pritchard-Jones, Nigel Webb, Richard Kenyon |
Wunderman UK |
Art Director, Copywriter, Creative Director, Creative Director |
| Will Martin |
News UK |
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| Charlotte Pike |
News UK |
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| Kate Bird |
News UK |
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| David Robinson |
News UK |
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| Claire Gribben |
News UK |
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| Robbie Williams |
News UK |
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| Parjeev Kalirai |
News UK |
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| Joanna Niemiec |
News UK |
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| Greg Halfacre |
News UK |
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| Alex Carapiet |
News UK |
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| Harry Hayden |
News UK |
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| Mark Hudson |
News UK |
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| Josh Clarke |
News UK |
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| Keith Drewrey |
Pulse Creative |
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| Alex Parr |
Pulse Creative |
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| Natalie Pickering |
Pulse Creative |
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| Matt Thomas |
Pulse Creative |
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| Yannis Fairfield |
Wunderman UK |
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| Michael Maxwell |
Wunderman UK |
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| Mark Wake |
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| Michael Tredway |
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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, league names and results – 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).
We devised a fully integrated campaign to convey the new season message. We developed print ads in national newspapers, digital media on major sports sites, while a series of emails drove sign ups and engagement. Social channels were deployed to magnify reach and engagement.
At the heart of it all was a personalised video sent to 200,000 of our most important audience, the league managers. 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.
We surpassed our target of over 1 million sign-ups. 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.
And 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.
Digital platforms are 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. Our mix of prime content on social, website and blog sites made for a fully integrated digital experience.
In the face of 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.