Ahead Of Super Rugby Start The Blues Recruit New-To-Blue Fans Via ‘Bring It Blue’ Campaign

Briefed with the challenge to recruit all Aucklanders to get behind The [Auckland] Blues ahead of the start of the 2021 Super Rugby season, agency Federation teamed up with radio star and passionate Hurricane’s fan to recruit a new tribe of supporters – Auckland-based supporters of other rugby teams.

The idea tapped into the insight that many of those living in New Zealand’s biggest city Auckland are not originally from Auckland and thus have loyalties to their own home town teams. Federation’s strategy was to build a campaign around a well-known Auckland personality – Andrew ‘Mulls’ Mulligan (the co-host of Auckland’s The Rock’s breakfast radio show – whose hometown was Wellington and is a famous Hurricanes supporter.

‘Bring it Blue’ launched ahead of the 26 March kick-off of the 2021 Super Rugby season and spanned radio, out-of-home, social and mobile, but began with Mulligan’s co-hosts carrying out several live, on-air pranks on him to raise awareness for season-opening Blues vs Hurricanes match and to inspire other Blues fans to banter with their non-Blues supporting friends to get in behind the team too.

The pranks played on a seemingly reluctant, but good-humoured Mulligan were turned into comic online content: these ranged from a faux photo shoot of Mulligan becoming the face of a Blues for a billboard promoting the match, Mulligan winning a competition for a car that happened to be Blues branded, Mulligan being gifted a jersey for him and his child by current Blues stars and even an announcement about his blues support live at Eden Park on the day of the match.

“‘Bring it Blue’ was a fantastic idea to create some serious competitive banter, have a bit of fun, and try to convert those that hadn’t yet considered following the Blues,” explained The Blues GM Operations Sarah D’Audney.

Federation Managing Partner Olly Boden added: “We treated Aucklanders to some seriously engaging content in the lead up to game day. The response was great, Blues players even waded in to send Mulls personal text messages celebrating his switch over to the blue side.”

Outcome:

Throughout the week the campaign reached more than 100k listeners on-air, more than 100k Aucklanders with the billboard and more than 300k fans via social media. The campaign also led to a rise in attendance and ticket sales.