Toyota Activates Cricket Australia Partnership With ‘Celebrating Celebrations’

With the aim of driving brand engagement and consideration amongst cricket fans and becoming a part of the cricket conversation this summer, Australian Cricket sponsor Toyota has been running ‘Celebrating Celebrations – The Follow-On’ through the season.

While last year’s initiative saw campaign characters ‘Steve’ and ‘Dave’ help Aussies learn the basics at so-called Celebration Training, the 2015/16 season version of the campaign saw them step up their game to help fans and players ‘push the limits of celebratory excellence’.

This saw the pair delve deeper into the celebratory art and break through with new innovations, new players, new experts, new techniques and more challenging challenges.

Alongside Dave and Steve, plus Toyota ambassadors and cricket legends Steve Waugh, Michael Clarke & Brett Lee, was a star-studded cast of current Cricket Australia players.

At the core of the campaign, which primarily ran across Twitter and Facebook (with additional print, broadcast and ambassador strands) was a set of short videos which saw players tested in a series of ‘advanced celebration training’ exercises hosted on the campaign’s digital hub (http://www.toyota.com.au/cricket/celebratingcelebrations).

These included ‘Innovations’

‘Calling All Celebrators’,

‘The Jump, Pump and Swat’,

and ‘The Cuzzy bro’.

This content set, which also included real-time posts on Twitter during Cricket Australia’s Test, One Day International and T20 series’.

Great win to the Aussies. Let's hope Steve & Dave nailed the landing! #ohwhatafeeling https://t.co/Z57qFklG33 pic.twitter.com/g0KSoyG8wk

— Toyota Australia (@Toyota_Aus) November 9, 2015

Further amplification saw 13 of the videos integrated into Channel 9’s coverage of the Cricket, while ambassadors, such as Brett Lee, amplified the campaign through their social channels.

The campaign evolved in response to a brief to build on the success of the 2014/15 edition of the Celebrating Celebrations campaign,

and it even brought back some of the best bits from last summer, whilst keeping the creative fresh.

The campaign ran through the Australian cricketing summer: from November 2015 to February 2016.

The initiative was developed in harness with sports and sponsorship agency Gemba, social agency One Green Bean and media agency The Media Store.

‘Celebrating Celebrations really resonated with Cricket fans in 2014, so this year we wanted to bring it back bigger and better than ever. And who better to go completely over the top than Steve & Dave?’ says Nic Lloyd, manager sponsorships, events and promotions at Toyota Australia.

Hicklin, executive creative director at Gemba adds: ‘Steve and Dave embody the irreverent spirit of the Aussie sports fan, and they give the Toyota brand a unique voice that resonates with fanatics around the country. Their disarming comedy combined with elite sports is a powerful platform for us, allowing the brand to deliver hundreds of pieces of real time, rich content across multiple social platforms.’

Comment

It is a classic strategy as dynamic, fluid and real-time game-relevant comic content can generate serious social engagement and ongoing conversations between fans and brands.

Indeed, according to Gemba, Toyota’s Sports & Entertainment agency, the campaign ‘exceeded the KPIs set for video views and reach on Facebook’.

This year’s results follow those from the 2014/15 season which saw more than two million video views, a best-performing Twitter post achieve a 14.5% engagement rate versus an average Toyota engagement rate of 3.19% and an overall campaign sentiment reaching a positive 86%.

Links

Toyota Australia Website:

http://www.toyota.com.au/

Toyota Australia YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/user/ToyotaAust

Toyota Australia Twitter:

https://twitter.com/toyota_aus

Toyota Australia Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/toyota.aus

Cricket Australia YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/user/cricketaustraliatv

Cricket Australia Twitter