Europcar activates its Arsenal FC sponsorship by rolling out its latest comic player-led promotional video called ‘Road Trip’.
Starring Arsenal players Petr Cech, Theo Walcott and Danny Welbeck, the creative story follows the trio travelling to a game – in one of the auto hire outfit’s vehicles – after having missed the team coach to an away game.
After forward Walcott tells team-mates that there are five hours to kill, the comic commercial sees the soccer stars pass the time with light-hearted bickering, a magazine quizzes, drumming their fingers on the dashboard and even make a stop en-route at Dinoland – before getting an angry call from the coach.
It initially began with a 4 April, 30-second ‘Teaser’,
before rolling out the full online funny film on 7 April.
It was further supported by ‘Outakes’,
and a ‘Behind-The-Scenes’ film too
The objective of this fun and fresh online spot is not just to reinforce awareness of its role as the club’s official car and van rental partner, but also to illustrate the convenience of the rental car/van company’s services and to connect the brand to the fun side of travel.
According to Ken McCall, managing director at Europcar Group, the spot ‘perfectly ties together the Europcar and Arsenal brands to create light-hearted, fun and easily shareable content’.
‘Road Trip’ was created in harness with SMG’s sports division – called Sports at SMG – and LiquidThread and aims to be highly shareable amongst the Arsenal fanbase and the wider football community.
The campaign features on YouTube, Facebook and Europcar’s content hub for Arsenal fans.
Comment
Using a ‘comic star-studded road trip’ as a thematic spot setting is a tried-and-tested tactic in contemporary sports sponsorship activation on both sides of the Atlantic: for example, April also saw Capital One activate its NCAA Final Four sponsorship with a star-studded ‘Road Trip’ spot series (see case study).
While it is a simple approach, it seems to be a pretty effective strategy.
After all, the central spot has notched up more than one million YouTube views to date – so it has certainly gained some traction and been successfully shared socially.
With teasers, the main spot, plus out-takes and even a behind-the-scenes web film, Europcar really are proving the old content creation rule of thumb that ‘if you are doing it, then film it’.
This quirky, comic web film follows on from the successful ‘Face to Face With The Arsenal Family’ online video which announced the club/car hire company partnership back in 2014 – which racked up more than 6.4 million social shares in its first three days (see case study).
It also follows on from Europcar’s subsequent ‘Fan Of The Season’ competition (see case study) and other Arsenal activations like it’s content and offer-led Arsenal digital hub (see case study).
Links:
Europcar Website:
Europcar YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/user/EuropcarUK
Europcar Twitter:
https://twitter.com/europcar_uk
Europcar Google+:
https://plus.google.com/u/1/+europcaruk/posts
Europcar Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/EuropcarUK
Arsenal Website:
Arsenal Twitter:
Sports at SMG:
LiquidThread:
