O2 has leveraged its England Rugby rights through a rousing animated film urging the whole country to get behind the host nation team during the tournament in the next phase of its Rugby World Cup world.
Continuing its ongoing, multi-phase ‘Wear The Rose’ initiative, this latest campaign (which takes a phrase creative approach) will form the core of the RFU principle sponsor’s activation (including its responsive and real-time work) during the tournament itself.
The ‘Make Them Giants’ strand of this ongoing leverage programme – which works on the premise that fan support can make England’s rugby players feel like giants – is led by a film that was initially posted online and which will subsequently roll out on television and in cinemas nationwide.
The cartoon features England Captain Chris Robshaw, fullback Mike Brown and lock Courtney Lawes en route to Twickenham and growing in stature as the country gets behind them. By the close of the film the players are as tall as buildings and their opponents intimidated.
The work was developed with agency VCCP, directed by Elliott Dear and produced by Blinkink (the director and animation team behind John Lewis’ blockbuster ‘The Bear & The Hare’ Christmas campaign).
The spot is supported by print, outdoor and digital executions adopting the same creative style and with a digital platform that enables fans to create their own England Rugby avatar which they can use and share on their social media channels.
A further digital tool called the ‘totalizer; will capture all of the team support O2 has generated and display how many people in total have interacted with the campaign.
This totaliser will be streamed live into the England training camp to illustrate to the team how much support there is for them across England.
An out-of-home push is spearheaded by an Oxford Circus underground tunnel wrap at central London tube hub station Oxford Circus and via an exclusive in-programme ad on the bus shelter in ITV soap opera Coronation Street for six weeks.
Plus, a partnership with The Sun will see O2 distribute around two million posters to fans across the country.
This creative approach and tone will also form the core of the brand’s real-time and low latency tournament activation.
The cartoon approach will enable the brand to create content on the hoof and put it out there as fast as possible without having to get player time, without real action footage and without contravening the tournament rules for non official tournament sponsors.
The heart of this real-tim phase will be an O2 newsroom staffed by creatives from VCCP, planners from Havas Media and O2 marketers who will combine to create and roll out content primarily across Facebook and Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat.
‘With sports it is all about what’s happening in the moment and if it’s about getting people to participate you want to encourage those conversations; that means doing it In real-time,’ argues Bibby.
Indeed, the brand is already preparing for various on and off-pitch scenarios during the tournament so that it can prepare reactive content to wins and defeats and to stunning plays and even injuries.
O2 has even created a pre-prepared library of short animated clips to react to certain match moments and tournament outcomes.
The strategic aim of this campaign phase is not only to make it reactive to events as they happen through the tournament, but also to ensure it is as inclusive as possible but also to set O2 up to be reactive and nimble throughout the tournament.
The goal to be seen as the brand helping England to success at the Rugby World Cup began in earnest earlier this year with the creation of the #WeartheRose tag which was used across social media and digital billboards to seed the idea of coming together to support the team.
It follows on from previous O2 #WearTheRose RWC phases such as August’s rebranding of all O2 stores (see case study), a nationwide washing line shirt giveaway (see case study) and social media driven, fan-created support film (see case study), plus its July ad campaign based around its England’s Take That ‘Send Off’ event at the O2 (see case study).
Comment
With creative echoes of Nike’s FIFA World Cup ‘The Last Game’ animation (see case study) and tactical parallels with Adidas’ Brazil 2014 prepared content library and detailed event planning (see case study), this is certainly a sophisticated and striking final phase to O2’s impressive campaign.
Also, this heartfelt creative approach marks something of a stylistic departure not only from the more usual aggressive and masculine style of rugby ads in general and O2’s previous work in particularly.
This continues the approach being taken by so many RWC 2015 sponsor in their activation in terms of attempting to engage the mass market with the tournament rather than specifically focusing on the traditional rugby fan.
According to O2 marketing and consumer director Nina Bibby and VCCP CEO Michael Sugden the decision to animate the players to engage people that were not hard-core rugby fans and England supporters.
‘The animation broadens the appeal [and] makes sure we’re touching a broader audience, women and children, those who aren’t the die-hard fans,’ argues Bibby.
‘Those who really know rugby will recognise the players, and they will get it. As opposed to alienating, it will have more of an inclusive effect.’
O2 marketing head Ian Cafferky also argued that the trouble with the traditional ‘blood, guts, glory’ sports activation style was that it can alienates consumers who aren’t hard core fans of the event.
Links
O2 Sport YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/user/o2sports
O2 Sports Twitter:
@O2Sports
#WearTheRose
O2 Sports Instagram:
https://instagram.com/o2sports/
O2 Sports Google+:
https://plus.google.com/116304440606210600730/videos
O2 Priority Sports Website:
http://www.o2priority.co.uk/sports
England Rugby Website:
RFU Website:
