World Tennis Tournament title sponsor ABN AMRO blended three pillars – tennis, passion and sustainability – into a multi-faceted ‘Game Changers’ activation which turned 50,000 tennis balls destined for landfill into three different products and a playground.
Objectives
ABM Amro has been the main sponsor of The Netherland’s biggest tennis tournament since it began back in 1974 and as such is the longest running sponsorship within the ATP Tour.
Indeed, at the start of the 2019 tournament, which ran between 9 and 17 February, the ATP 500 tournament, the bank announced it had again extended the partnership for a further three years running up until at least 2022.
The activation objective is to combine three core pillars: ‘tennis’ in general, this tournament’s commitment to ‘limitless passion’ (the passion of the players, the ball boys and girls, the umpires, the organisation and the fans) which it believes is behind its success and also to bring to life ABN AMRO’s mission of ‘stimulating and supporting the transition to a circular, sustainable economy’.
This also needed to be activated through the lens of keeping such a long running partnership fresh and forward looking and to this end the idea behind ‘Game Changers’ is to focus on and support individuals or innovations that change the game – forever.
The initiative was driven by the idea of giving a tennis-related issue and fresh, new purpose and it was informed by a research phase which found that more than 300 million tennis balls are produced every year and almost none of these get recycled.
We discovered that 300 million tennis balls are produced every year, almost nothing of which is recycled. Not very sustainable.
This research found that tennis balls are very difficult to recycle and that those who had tried to introduce a more sustainable approach had experienced very limited success.
Activation
The team developed a ‘top-secret’ recycling process that enabled it to re-purpose old tennis balls and then to transform them into brand new products and this resulted in introducing four new ‘Game Changers’ at the Rotterdam tournament.
A bespoke ‘Circular’ sneaker (as worn on court through the tournament by the ball girls and boys), a tennis racquet vibration dampener, a bluetooth speaker and a sustainable roof tile.
Plus, the sponsor reached out to ticket-holders and site visitors and asked them to bring their old tennis balls to the tournament so that they could be re-purpose in order to build a brand-new ‘Krajicek Playground’ in the city (for which 50,000 used tennis balls were required).
ABN AMRO Game Changers – Case Film from BrandBase on Vimeo.
In terms of promoting the project, the bank and its marketing team not only worked with product designers to create the products, but also created and amplified a spearhead campaign film which was supported by behind-the-scenes social videos of each product and also created and curated an exhibition at the tournament to tell the story.
18218_02_ABN_WTT_CUTDOWN_V201_02 from BrandBase on Vimeo.
020519_18218-01_ABN_WTT_BTS_Circular-Schoen_V403_1080p from BrandBase on Vimeo.
abn_GC_campagne_demper from BrandBase on Vimeo.
abn_GC_campagne_hearo from BrandBase on Vimeo.
abn_GC_campagne_tegel from BrandBase on Vimeo.
Outcome
The exhibition engaged 123,000 visitors at the World Tennis Tournament, while the media related to the activation generated 18 articles, two radio show features and one TV piece spot.
The resulting digital and social campaign generated more than 5m online video impressions, more than 2m Snapchat impressions and 1.98m Twitter impressions.
This project also scooped several marketing awards in the sports and sponsorship space – including the 2019 Drum Experience Award.
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