Lucozade Sport launched a multi-strand activation leveraging its sponsorship of the England Womens Team ahead of the FIFA World Cup that includes an on bottle promotion and which is led by a rewrite of the famous ‘Three Lions’ anthem.
The brand, which is the official sports drinks and hydration partner of the England women’s and men’s senior teams, is using its assets to bring to life its commitment to public fitness.
To boost support for the England’s Women’s team, Lucozade Sport’s marketing team rewrote the country’s unofficial World Cup anthem ‘Three Lions’.
This reworking of the original 1996 Baddiel and Skinner song so often chanted by fans during men’s tournaments turns the familiar anthem into a powerful soliloquy expressing the trials and challenges of overcoming prejudices about women in sport.
The song was originally an ironic and nostalgically lament of England’s 1966 World Cup win and revels in the nation’s familiar low expectations the team after a succession of major tournament underachievement.
Developed in harness with agency Grey London, ‘The Three Lionesses’ reworks the original lyrics by switching the original low expectations for sexist attitudes about women’s football in general.
The new version rewrites the line “England’s going to throw it away, gonna blow it away” as “That we don’t have the skill in their eyes. Well, we’re tired of the lies.”
The anthem spot comes in a full length 60-second version,
plus 20-
and 10-second cut downs.
Plus, to further driving awareness of the women’s game and to generate support for the Lionesses this summer, the release of 16m special edition bottles featuring England Lionesses defender and captain Steph Houghton and forward Nikita Parris marks the first time that footballers have been featured on a Lucozade Sport bottle
And, as a more direct thread of its umbrella public fitness strategy, Lucozade Sport has also offered 90,000 minutes of free football pitch time nationwide through Powerleague and Goals football centres with the aim of giving more women the courage to get into the sport.
“We’re delighted to be using [Lucozade Sport] to further increase awareness and interest in the women’s game,” said Lucozade Sport head of marketing Claire Keaveny.
“We’re proud to play our part in helping to make the England Lionesses household names and hope that they continue to inspire a whole generation of people to move.”
England captain Steph Houghton added: “I’m delighted to feature on Lucozade Sport bottles this summer. It’s a drink I’ve used in preparation for and after matches for a long time. It’s great that they are investing and supporting the women’s game at different levels and it’s an exciting time to be part of women’s football.”
Comment:
The Women’s World Cup campaign is the latest phase in the brand’s three year commitment to improving the nation’s fitness and the Lucozade Sport marketing team sees France 2019 as one of the biggest tests of this commitment.
The World Cup activation is just one strand of Lucozade Sport’s strategy of capitalising on its public sports program by tapping into culturally relevant moments and making its brand more sustainable.
This ambitious and creatively admirable partnership with the Lionesses sees the brand put its money where our mouth is by offering people who want to get into the game the right facilities to do that.
The brand’s objective to encourage more women to get into football is, according to Keaveny, one of the more complicated challenges Lucozade Sport faces in terms of maximising its marketing effectiveness.
“We’re living in an attention-deficit generation and people are switching off adverts,” explained Keaveny. “We have to create campaigns that are culturally relevant and mean something to people so that they want to talk about it. Hence the Lionesses campaign, tapping into a real cultural moment but in a way that resonates with consumers.”
It’s other recent sports marketing work ranges from supporting previous men’s team captains – including Steven Gerrard and Harry Kane – and its current brand flavour extension campaign championing boxer Anthony Joshua (in which the World Heavyweight Champion launches his own flavour and erects ad billboards for it in his native Watford all by himself).
It was back in 2016 that Lucozade Sport underwent a brand realignment in partnership with agency Grey London that saw it shift from pure product marketing to launch the ‘Made to Move’ campaign that aimed to get one million people in the UK moving more by 2020.
Since then, campaigns within this project ranged from a 2017 London Marathon ‘Made To Move’ marketing thread (see case study), to long-form film work leveraging its ambassador alliance with Joshua revolving around the power of coaching and which surprised commuters with impromptu live stream fitness sessions at a bus shelters (see case study) and its 2018 collaboration with Active Communities Network on an initiative called ‘B active.’
The project is just about marketing and event experiences.
Back in 2017 it launched a health app to help increase engagement with its consumers based on a step-based system where users are automatically entered into a daily draw for every 5,000 steps taken.
Between May 2017 and December 2018, this ‘Made To Move’ app was downloaded 141,970 times and reached 20th on App Store’s health and fitness chart.
Is this approach working?
Well it is according to Keaveny who states that the brand has grown 18% year-on-year and is ahead of schedule in terms of its target as it has already got 1.5 million people moving since we made the commitment back in 2016.
Links:
Lucozade Sport
https://www.youtube.com/user/lucozade
https://twitter.com/lucozadesport
https://www.facebook.com/LucozadeSport
https://www.instagram.com/lucozadesport/
https://www.lucozadesport.com/
Grey London
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