Manchester City FC’s main partner Etihad Airlines’ digital-first, travel-inspired content series to promote key destinations to fans and general consumers.
A campaign in which Manchester City’s shirt and stadium sponsor Etihad worked with the club, the manager, players and agencies RD Content and Unruly to create a global skills challenge – running from November 2018 and finishing in June 2019 – based around a seven stop football freestyler tour of key airline destinations to drive consideration and purchase.
Territory: UK/Global
Agency: RD Content & Unruly
Objectives
With the overall aim of increase the audience’s consideration and intent to purchase travel with Etihad Airways, this campaign was RD Content and Unruly’s response to a brief to develop an engaging travel-inspired content series that showcases some of Etihad’s most attractive destinations using the lens of football to appeal to Manchester City fans and beyond.
Activation
The campaign was built around a series of seven branded content episodes in which some of the world’s top football freestylers travel to various Etihad destinations in order to take on a set of extreme challenges set by Manchester City first team players.
Each stage and each episode of the competition was based in a different city and stop featured a single challenge between two competing freestylers. The winner of the challenge remained in the evolving competition and chose which Etihad destination the tour travelled to next.
Starting in November 2018 and finishing in June 2019, the tour visited Jakarta, New York, Bangkok, Paris, Melbourne, Abu Dhabi and Manchester and each episode was also complimented with a paired destination guide from the same location.
The overall winner of the challenge, the victor in the tour’s last destination, won the right to perform in front of 55,000 fans at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester before taking on the ultimate runner-up in front of Pep Guardiola in June 2019.
Outcome / Results
In total, according to the club, the series amassed more than 35 million views and £2.2m of media value.
Across Etihad’s own channels the series generated over seven million engagements.
The average watch rate on YouTube was 62% – a figure well above the club’s average benchmark of 38%.
On Instagram the content had an engagement rate of 11% – which is also higher than the 8% benchmark
Influencer channels accounted for 1.1 million views
Campaign success measurement data also showed that 67% of ‘exposed viewers’ (who had seen the creative) agree with the statement that ‘Etihad fly to a range of interesting places’ (which is +76% from the control group), while 44% said they were ‘likely to take an action to fly with Etihad Airways in the future’ (which is +52% from the control group).
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