Audi leveraged its Tottenham Hotspur FC partnership through a 2018-19 season social video series which brings to life the car company and club’s shared ‘dare to be different’ philosophy and approach.
The campaign focused on building the brand and created an emotional connection between fans and the auto company through online videos which placed the club’s cockerel emblem (a device used to represent shared values) as the creative hero rather than the players or the vehicles.
Territory: UK/Global
Agency: We Are Social
Objectives
The brief was to leverage Audi’s new Tottenham partnership on social media in order to increase the emotional connection with Audi amongst both Spurs fans and football supporters in general.
The campaign’s primary objective was to build awareness of the partnership and increase brand desire: to make Spurs supporters and all football fans to think ‘Audi makes cars I’d love to own’.
The 2018-19 season Audi/Spurs partnership came after Audi research revealed that the Premier League has the fewest automotive sponsors of all the major European leagues.
Only seven clubs in the Premier League have partnership deals with car manufacturers, compared to 15 in the Bundesliga, 14 in Serie A, 11 in La Liga and 9 in Ligue 1.
The research also found that this competitive landscape is largely defined by product-focused partnerships.
The majority of car brands fail to build a deeper reason for these football club partnerships and instead prioritise creating tactical campaigns that focus on their individual car models and/or on traditional football content.
So an opportunity was identified for Audi to work with Tottenham on a leverage programme that focused on developed a deeper connection between brand and fan: one which was based around an emotional relationship and which linked to the core principles shared by both Audi and Tottenham.
The core unifying theme uniting Audi and Spurs is a belief in doing things the right way, not the easy way.
Tottenham, which was founded in 1882, has a tradition of playing an entertaining and attacking style of football rather than simply focusing on winning or losing.
This is encapsulated both by the club motto ‘Audere Est Facere / To Dare Is To Do’ and by a quote from legendary Spurs manager Bill Nicholson “It is better to fail aiming high than to succeed aiming low. And we of Spurs have set our sights very high, so high in fact that even failure will have in it an echo of glory. It’s no use just winning, we’ve got to win well.”
While for Audi success is also about challenging the norms through a progressive mindset.
Its ‘Vorsprung Durch Technik’ underpins the brand driven by those who embrace a different definition of success.
This insight led to defining Audi’s Spurs partnership role as one which ‘challenges the rules of football’ brought to life through a ‘Dare To Be Different’ creative platform that aims to build a bridge between the premium automotive and football brands.
Activation
The four-year official car partnership was first announced on August 16th 2018 and through the 2018-19 season Audi leveraged it through activation which focused on their shared ‘passion for progress’ and belief in ‘doing things right’ rather than what most other car companies and football clubs do or say.
This approach led the building a building a platform to unite both the Spurs and Audi brands by:
> Harnessing fans’ passion and support for their team to do things differently in the football industry.
> Supporting the players in challenging the norm this season as a team and as individuals.
> Inspiring the football community with our young fearless players who keep defying expectations.
The partnership sees the car company’s four rings logo feature across the new stadium’s digital signage, LED advertising system, big screens and the interior TV network and also saw an Audi Q8 deliver the club’s famous ‘Golden Cockerel’ statue to the new ground.
Audi’s season-long activation was built around a series of social videos which set out to celebrate the role it plays in some of the most memorable moments in Tottenham’s new stadium’s short history.
Audi began with a video that brought to life this branded mascot delivery to life via a tongue-in-cheek video distributed socially across the car company and club’s channels to provide fans with a glimpse of the new arena and to build brand affiliation in the early part of the season.
The primary focus on the club’s cockerel rather than on the star players or the brand’s vehicles aimed to reflect the ‘Dare To Be Different’ idea.
The ‘Cockerel Delivery’ spot, the first film in an Audi/Spurs series, was posted on November 6th 2018.
The cockerel club emblem continued to be the star of Audi content through the season.
The second social spot, posted ahead of the official stadium opening, saw the cockerel character return: this time positioned as the guardian of the club’s values.
This ‘Audi & The Cockerel’ video, which also set out to highlight the ‘doing things differently ‘synergy shared by Audi and Spurs, was posted on February 26th 2019 and starred Tottenham Hotspurs’ Dele Alli, Christian Eriksen, Davinson Sanchez and Lucas Moura.
The narrative arc sees the players arrive on set to admire the Audi Q8, before the cockerel gets behind the wheel and the ad’s tagline directs viewers to ‘Explore the new Audi Q8 like never before’.
The video was amplified across YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
Never boring, always unexpected.
See the new Audi Q8 like never before with @spursofficial @dele_official @chriseriksen8 @lucasmoura7 @daosanchez26#AudiQ8 #COYS pic.twitter.com/FWezjiDTk5— Audi UK (@AudiUK) February 26, 2019
Despite Tottenham entering a new era, the cockerel also aimed to provide a reminder to stay true to the club’s values.
A third video, ‘Audi and Spurs Stay True’ featured a line up of Spurs stars and the cockerel, debuted on May 10th 2019 and leveraged spiking Spurs interest around the move to the new stadium and the UEFA Champions League.
The spot shows off various different parts of the team’s new multi-use venue – including the home dressing room, press auditorium and underground car park – before closing on the side of the pitch.
In this film, the cockerel is joined by Spurs stars Toby Alderweireld, Fernando Llorente, Erik Lamela and Kyle Walker-Peters, as well as club legend and former skipper Ledley King.
Each video in the series was distributed across multiple social channels (both Audi-owned and Tottenham-owned) in different formats.
Shorter video edits aimed to deliver mass awareness of the partnership, while longer edits set out to build the brand amongst an engaged audience, delivering earned reach.
The cockerel creative series was also shown on the in-ground screens at The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium to further drive engagement and awareness among the ticket holders.
The Audi team spearheading the Spurs partnership was led by Audi UK events manager Christina Dudley and social media lead Emma Page, while at Spurs the relationship was steered by senior partnerships manager Richard Good and head of communications Simon Felstein.
The creative was developed by a team from We Are Social Sport led by group creative director Gareth Leeding and senior creative Rob James and Doug Stewart, group account director Nick Dodd, business development director John Crozier, account director Franco Necchi-Ghiri, account manager Harriet Donovan and senior strategist Diego Chicharro.
While the production side was led by We Are Social Studios where the production manager was Annabel Heath, with input from producers Sophie Fitzgerald and Jen Lawlor, the director was Giorgio Bruni and the edited was Hasani Franke.
Paid media was handled by PhD.
“Usually, sports sponsorship activations from car brands just involve pictures of players receiving cars, or kicking balls into the boot. It’s tired and outdated and in desperate need of some new thinking,” said We Are Social Group Creative Director Gareth Leeding.
“We wanted to rewrite the rules for Audi and Spurs, and put a new star in the spotlight in a twist on the car demo video.”
While Emma Page, social media lead at Audi UK, added that the campaign “breaks conventions” and that “Audi and Spurs have a shared passion – daring to be different from others – and we’re excited to show how we can stand out from the crowd.”
Outcome / Results
According to the club and the brand, the partnership’s first season film content generated a total of 38.35m video views and generated a further 1.15m social engagements.
These came with a 40 per cent average video retention rate, while Twitter pre-rolls delivered 60+ per cent retention and 3m views.
The tie-up also boasted 26m earned PR impressions.
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