All Blacks global sponsor Steinlager’s nostalgic campaign leveraging the heightened interest in the team due to the Rugby World Cup recreates the first ever New Zealand team to tour the UK back in 1905.
Called ‘The Originals’, the campaign revolves around that 1905 underdog team and aims to draw parallels with the current All Blacks as they head to the 2015 tournament in England.
The ‘Originals’, who lost just one of 35 games on that fast British rugby tour, were genuine underdogs and the amateur players were miners, farmers and blacksmiths.
The campaign was initially led by a TV spot that was directed by Adam Stevens.
In addition to the TV strand of the campaign, the work also runs across other platforms too.
A long-form print campaign, also by DDB New Zealand, focuses in on three specific (and remarkable) stories from the Originals’ journey:
The aim of the copy campaign phase is to remind today’s All Blacks fans and team itself that ‘we’ve done it before, and we can do it again’.
The campaign, which was developed with agency DDB New Zealand, aims to engage through the values of purity, humility and authenticity and the nation’s sporting pride and joy in their national rugby team.
That tour and that team was the platform on which the All Blacks became a totemic symbol of pride and excellence for the country.
The agency team behind the campaign included chief creative officer Damon Stapleton, executive creative director Shane Bradnick, art director: Nicole Sykes, copywriter Rory McKechnie, senior account director Jenny Travers, agency producer Andy Robilliard and photographer Toaki Okano.
The agency’s brief was essentially to inspire New Zealand through Steinlager for the Rugby World Cup.
Comment
It is a powerful spot and an emotional story and we think the beautifully crafted and finely written print executions represent the best of traditional advertising activation.
And we are not alone in this opinion.
DDB won a ‘Highly Commended’ award for the campaign in September’s ‘Newspaper Ad Of The Month’ competition.
But an underdog story that mirrors New Zealand’s hopes for the Rugby World Cup 2015 – really?
The All Blacks are the biggest beast in the game and clear favourites for the tournament. NZ may be a small country in terms of population, but underdogs at the RWC 2015? No way.
The work follows the beer brand’s earlier ‘All Black Snap’ live rugby action, fan prize work earlier in 2015 for the Steinlager series.
As this campaign highlights, Steinlager (along with Air NZ – see our ‘Men In Black Safety Video’ campaign case study) is a global sponsor of the All Blacks.
This makes puts it in the third partnership tier of brands supporting the NZ Rugby Union (following from principal partner Adidas – see our case study of its ‘Force Of Black’ RWC campaign)
and major global sponsor AIG (see All Blacks website).
Links
All Blacks Website:
All Blacks Twitter:
https://twitter.com/AllBlacks
@AllBlacks
All Blacks Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/AllBlacks
All Blacks YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/user/nzrugby
DDB NZ:
