UK bank Barclays – a long-time football sponsor as the official partnership with the Premier League for the last 20 years, as well as title sponsorships of the Barclays Women’s Super League and the Barclays Women’s Championship – teamed up with West Ham United FC striker Michail Antonio for a short film showcasing the aims and achievements of its Barclays Community Football Fund via ‘Made In Wandsworth’.
The fund, created in partnership with UK-wide charity Sported, is committed to reducing community inequality through football principally by offering grants to groups that wish to start offering football, to expand their existing soccer programmes to new, under-represented audiences.
The campaign, running with the hashtag #AllToPlayFor, sees the forward, who also plays for Jamaica, return to his roots in Wandsworth (South London), to explore how the Barclays Community Football Fund has impacted his local community. It revolves around a 10-minute docu-short that outlines the fund’s commitment to supporting 5,500 community football groups across the UK with a minimum investment of £1m per year over the next three years.
The full length video dropped on 21 October which follows Antonio on a journey back to his old neighbourhood to visit members of his local area and support community organizations ranging from Sports Fusion to Tooting & Mitcham United.
The initiative was supported by The Mailroom: the multi-sport agency that represents Antonio which specialises in PR, marketing, social media management, content creation, commercial partnerships and athlete representation (with a stable that also includes Wilfried Zaha, Danielle Carter, Yan Valery, Joshua Buatsi and Team GB Olympic sprinter Ojie Edoburun and Paralympian Goldmedallist Felix Streng.)
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This work follows in the footsteps of Barclay’s September’s multi-channel campaign created in harness with agency M&C Saatchi Sport and Entertainment promoting the opening up of the ‘Barclays Community Football Fund’ to the public as part of the bank’s commitment to make football more accessible and to boost participation at every level across the country, its September’s Barclays Women’s Super League pre-season hype campaign ‘Unstoppable’ and its ‘Ode To School Football’ with Lauren James promoting its FA Girls’ Football Schools Partnership.
Barclays has a long and strong track record of putting at the heart of its marketing and CSR strategies. It was the original title partner of the Premier League and has been the league’s official banking partner for the last 20 years. More recently it has begun backing women’s football in a serious way and is the first title sponsor of both the Barclays Women’s Super League and the Barclays Women’s Championship. It also supports that FA Girl’s Football Schools Partnership and is committed to ‘giving girls in England equal access to football in schools by 2024’.
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