Cricketers Jordan, Pope & Burns Front Kia’s Surrey CCC & Oval ‘Every Game Is A Journey’ Campaign
A summer, social-first campaign by Kia UK and in-house agency Innocean activated its Surrey County Cricket Club partnership and title sponsorship of the team’s Kia Oval home stadium and was fronted by a trio of star players and set out to leverage the new cricket season through fresh content that makes the partnership ‘bigger and better’.
Territory: UK
Agency: Innocean UK
Objective
Led by a trio of Surrey players who have all represented England – Chris Jordan, Ollie Pope and Rory Burns – the aim was to simultaneously appeal to a cricketing audience, amplify the inspirational message of Kia’s new branding and increase awareness of Kia’s association with cricket, the club and the stadium. The brief from the car company marketing team to Innocean UK was to develop social content at a pre-arranged media day.
Activation
The idea, which aimed to maximise the limited time available with each player, was to blend fresh, dynamic new content that linked to and would blend with pre-recorded car footage and archive cricket film into authentic, exciting and interactive content to elevate the connection between Kia and Surrey Cricket club across social media.
The agency thus studied the existing content it had to work with and then devised a complimentary plan for an hour shoot which included:
> Organic interview session.
> Scripted voice over session.
> Visual shots of players’ profile, kit prep and changing room ‘pre-match’ moments.
> Outdoor shots of the players on the field, their celebrations.
The resulting series of three online videos – one for each player – combined the new film with the archive footage. The tone was designed and adapted based on the footage and the personality of each player, while the team blended the unscripted and the scripted footage to produce edits that felt relaxed, natural and engaging.
The creative agency was Kia’s in-house outfit Innocean UK where the team was led by Chief Executive Officer Michael Herbert, Creative Dom Sweeney, Creative Directors Andy Brown and Steve Waring and Head Of Production Emma Smalley.
Outcome/Results
The resulting videos created an authentic and strong link between Kia and cricket with generated more than 21,000 views on the auto outfit’s UK social media platforms.
Comment
Kia and sister company Hyundai has long placed sports and sponsorship at the heart of its marketing mix through major partnerships such as its tie-ups with FIFA, UEFA, the NBA, the NRL, as well as tennis and many other sports.
Kia’s association with Surrey CCC and the associated stadium naming rights deal to the Kia Oval now stretches over more than a decade and this work followed on from early June’s initiative which aimed to ‘Inspire Young Cricket Players At The Kia Oval’ which saw the brand and club invite a group of young cricket players to train with current Head Coach and Surrey/England legend Alec Stewart and other Surrey coaches.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA9oZKLBCnM
It was also part of the car company’s other summer 2023 activations around the club and stadium sponsorship.
The T20 season has been taking over The Kia Oval this summer! ?
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