AWARDS FOR EXCELLENCE IN PUBLIC RELATIONS 2017

Transcription

1 AWARDS FOR EXCELLENCE IN PUBLIC RELATIONS 2017 PUBLIC RELATIONS INSTITUTE OF IRELAND

2 BEST USE OF SPONSORSHIP BEST SPONSORSHIP WHERE THE PR BUDGET WAS 50K OR UNDER CAMPAIGN Volkswagen GAA Sevens Rhona Blake, FPRII, PRCA Chairman; James Brogan, Managing Director, Legacy Consultants; Bernard Brogan, Commercial Director, Legacy Consultants; and Kevin Moore, MPRII, Deputy Managing Director, Legacy Consultants. DESCRIPTION OF CAMPAIGN Volkswagen, Ireland s best-selling car brand for the last four years, sought to expand its sponsorship strategy into the GAA through a unique partnership with the GAA Sevens. A strategic campaign led to a re-invigorated platform with a renewed appeal and awareness among GAA fans. The Volkswagen GAA Sevens were born. PUBLIC RELATIONS CONSULTANT Legacy Consultants CLIENT Volkswagen BACKGROUND TO THE CAMPAIGN The GAA All-Ireland Sevens is an inter club Gaelic football and hurling tournament held at senior, intermediate and junior levels on the weekend of the All-Ireland finals. The senior football competition, hosted in Kilmacud Crokes Dublin, is in its 43rd year and remains the most prestigious GAA sevens tournament in Ireland. The junior event is held in St. Jude s GAA club and has been running since The GAA Sevens tournament had been an under leveraged asset within the GAA sponsorship portfolio for many years. The concept attracts over a hundred clubs in total across the various competitions from across the near 1,600 clubs registered in Ireland. The strong values of community, volunteerism, inclusion, participation and trust a key part of the competition s values. Volkswagen, having previously invested in Irish rugby through a partnership with Leinster rugby and as a current partner with the Irish Rugby Football Union, sought to broaden the reach and appeal of its sponsorship portfolio by developing a partnership with the GAA. Without the budget for a major GAA sponsorship, Volkswagen tasked Legacy 1

3 Consultants to uncover a platform and develop a targeted campaign that would provide it with narrative to develop a meaningful connection with GAA fans and also provide a tool for dealers to develop a deeper connection with their local communities and GAA clubs. Legacy Consultants conducted a comprehensive audit of the marketplace and advised that the GAA Sevens tournament would be the perfect solution as it would provide Volkswagen with a cost effective partnership with an All-Ireland GAA tournament while also offering the opportunity to create their own unique identity in the GAA sponsorship landscape. Volkswagen would build out an activation campaign from a PR and digital perspective that would re-invigorate and amplify the appeal and interest in the GAA Sevens concept. Volkswagen could also promote the competition at a grassroots level and offer the chance to dealers to enter teams from their local community into the tournament. Legacy were thus engaged to negotiate the contract with Sevens GAA and develop an activation plan for the concept. STATEMENT OF OBJECTIVES With a limited budget and with sponsorship investment already allocated to rugby, Volkswagen was determined to utilise the under leveraged assets of the All-Ireland Sevens platform to build a unique identity for Volkswagen and generate PR and social media campaign that would position Volkswagen as a key partner of the GAA at both local and national level. KEY OBJECTIVES Create a new identity for the GAA Sevens tournament that would resonate with GAA fans/media through the creation of a new logo/branding and social media activation. Re-invigorate the sponsorship of the GAA Sevens through an innovative PR campaign that would raise the national profile of the tournament. This would be achieved through the creation of a structured and targeted national and local media campaign to ensure sustained national coverage of the competition. Create a new social media campaign that would focus on innovation and a never done before initiative to generate talk ability and interest in the GAA Sevens across Ireland. Build a brand activation campaign around the event to ensure there was a surprise and delight element at play and that players and fans alike had the opportunity to experience the brand. Make the Volkswagen Sevens stand out in a competitive GAA sponsorship landscape. Increase the connection and network of relationships of dealers in their local community through a Below-the-Line promotion of offering local teams to win a place in the tournament through entry in their local dealer. METRICS OF SUCCESS Ensure Volkswagen is mentioned by at least 50% of all campaign communications in year-one of the sponsorship. Increase overall coverage levels for the Sevens tournament to over 50 pieces in Create reach online through the social media campaign and link social media assets to the event. Generate interest at a local level by looking to drive 5% of entries from local dealers. Deliver a surprise and delight moment as part of the activation. PROGRAMME PLANNING AND STRATEGY BACKGROUND To achieve the objectives set down by Volkswagen for this sponsorship it was necessary to build a campaign that would prolong the interest and awareness of the GAA Sevens beyond its normal parameters. The Volkswagen Sevens platform provided an excellent opportunity for the brand to create an identity for the brand in the GAA. We created a bespoke Volkswagen Sevens logo to further amplify this message and created a media campaign that would integrate this new identity into a series of PR events that would have national appeal while also having a unique message. The campaign was thus broken into the following phases; Phase 1 PR Campaign, Phase 2 Social Media Campaign, Phase 3 Sponsorship Activation. PHASE ONE The PR campaign was based around three distinct PR events to generate a sustained period of awareness around the Volkswagen Sevens prior to the tournament kick-off date. We also sought to integrate various elements into our photo calls including product placement, branded merchandise, a giant 7 s prop which led to great branded coverage and creative photo shots. 2

4 PR EVENT 1 This PR event was focused on launching Volkswagen s partnership with the All-Ireland Senior GAA Sevens competition. The focus for media was around Volkswagen investing in grassroots GAA and local GAA personalities. In addition to sports media we also crafted a business focused press release designed to target the media/marketing sections of the business media. This launch event was held on Tuesday 9th August, in the GAA club of Kilmacud Crokes. At the event we had had number of high profile GAA players for our photo-call including Bernard Brogan, Paul Mannion and Cian O Sullivan. We received an excellent response to the media event with approximately fifteen media attending from print, online and radio. PR EVENT 2 On the 30th August we widened the remit our coverage by hosting another media event to celebrate the launch of the St Jude s All-Ireland Hurling Sevens. This event was held in St. Jude s GAA club in Dublin and to amplify our hurling credentials we led the media invite with Kilkenny hurling legend Richie Hogan. Unable to use Dublin legend and St. Jude s player Kevin McManamon, we twisted the angle and instead invited his brother, a former Dublin player himself and St. Jude s player. He spoke candidly about his brother and the upcoming games in for Dublin. The dual media approach of both hurling and football was a tremendous success with approximately 20 media attending from print, online and radio. PR EVENT 3 With two very successful launches having sustained the Volkswagen Sevens overall narrative in August we needed further angles to complete the media campaign. With the Dublin v Mayo All-Ireland final only weeks away, we decided to create a media event that would focus on the All-Ireland Final and utilised GAA personalities Darran O Sullivan (Kerry) and Conor Mortimer (Mayo) to drive media interest. We also announced the launch of our innovative social media initiative for the weekend of the event, Volkswagen GAA TV. This targeted and creative approach leaded yielded some excellent results with approximately 15 media attending on the day. SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN The culmination of our Sevens campaign centred on the All Ireland event in Kilmacud Crokes on 17th September Having built out significant media coverage in advance of the launch, our objective was to use social to drive interest in the tournament and for this we needed to innovate. Our insights suggested that there was a huge interest in GAA on this particular weekend and that a lot of people had heard of the GAA Sevens but had never got the chance to see a game. If we could create content that was shareable and easily consumed this would greatly increase the interest and awareness of the competition across the country. The concept of Volkswagen GAA TV was created which would provide near real time highlight of games occurring in multiple locations throughout the tournament. Thus GAA fans from around the country could follow the performance of their team and watch footage of how they were performing on Volkswagen social media channels. We created a hashtag #VW7s that was easily shareable online and there was huge engagement from clubs and players from across Ireland. For spectators that attended at the event, Volkswagen GAA TV was also shown live on the big screen during the day. As the games unfolded during the day, clubs from around Ireland began to watch and share our bite size content that also contained in the VW Sevens logo on it. These type of social highlights package was a first for the Volkswagen Sevens and marked a high point in the campaign as the hashtag VW7s went on to trend for the majority of this day. SPONSORSHIP ACTIVATION CAMPAIGN Our activation campaign around the tournament itself was focused on building synergies between the brand and the sponsorship platform. This was brought to life in a number of key areas including; Volkswagen Priority Parking We worked with tournament organisers to create a unique VIP car parking area where Volkswagen owners could park. This was an area close to the clubhouse and was warmly received by all drivers on the day. Volkswagen Big Screen To further amplify the VW Sevens TV concept, we set up a large big screen TV onsite that displayed our highlights packages but also a live social media feed where spectators could view at first hand the engagement with the #VW7s handle. Volkswagen Score Predictor To celebrate the All-Ireland Final weekend and the big game excitement, Volkswagen set up an innovative score predictor system where people could guess the score of the game, and following the result, Volkswagen provided some merchandise. 3

5 Volkswagen display It was important to have product placement as part of our activation therefore in high footfall zones in both areas, we strategically placed key product, across the entire activation we utilised over 10 cars. MEASUREMENT The overall Volkswagen campaign was a great success with the overall metrics very strong across our key objectives: 1. The overall sponsorship campaign generated over 80 pieces of coverage across print, online and broadcast media with a PR Value of 3,500,000 which is a huge level of media coverage for a relatively small sponsorship property. 2. Mentioned in 75% of all coverage around the Sevens confirming the new identity for the competition worked and was picked up by media. 3. The #VW7s trended number two in Ireland on the day of the tournament (number one was water protests) confirming that Volkswagen TV as a concept that was truly innovative and resonated with GAA fans. 4. First brand to host live GAA content from the Sevens tournament across their social channels. 5. Almost 4.5 million impressions were achieved in one day. 6. Over 200 cars availed of the Volkswagen Priority Parking concept delivering on our surprise and delight concept. 7. Over 10 hours of on air broadcasting through media partnerships with FM104 and TG4. 8. A total of 609 retweets on Twitter over the Sevens tournament % of entries into competition were direct from Volkswagen dealers. 4

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