THE BRIEF AND STRATEGY
On March 22nd, 2020 – a global pandemic, known to its friends as Covid-19 – ground the Australian Football League (AFL) season to a halt; the competition, the entertainment, the community, the rituals – cancelled. Images of the iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground with its naked stands haunted national news channels and footy fans sobbed into their beers from their lounge rooms.
The cancellation of the season not only put footy on hold. It threw a giant, virus-shaped spanner into Telstra’s landmark partnership with the AFL. Overnight, Telstra lost significant reach and share of voice on its key 5G messaging that was tied to their sponsorship and broadcast rights. All planned activity was swiped off the list.
TABOO was tasked with finding a new and innovative way to use the players - of which Telstra had access to all 800, along with their social channels - to help deliver the key benefits of its superior 5G network in a way that could be produced and executed under strict Covid-19 production regulations.
We interrupt this case study’s sweet, sweet flow with a side note: We imagine most people in our industry have worked on a major Telco at some point in their advertising lives. Maybe even you, dear reader. For those of you who have, you’ll know they're notoriously full of a lot of things; lots of products and services, lots of clients and lots of tape that is red. When you combine all that is Telstra, with all that is the Australian Football League, with all that is a global pandemic, you can quickly imagine just how many ideas an agency is not allowed to do.
Which is what makes this idea pretty special.
THE CREATIVE IDEA
Far away, in a little local primary school, a clever maths teacher had come up with a way to combine multiplication and AFL. He called it Dice Footy.
After a little internet research, we realised this humble game had huge potential. The potential, in fact, to be transformed into a fully- fledged, fully professional, national sports code – backed by not only one of the world’s largest and most influential sporting organisations, but also the country’s best and biggest telecommunications network.
Introducing The Australian Dice Football League (ADFL) - a new game designed to bring fans and players closer together and to give them all something to support and cheer about (yell at) at a time when they really (really) needed it.
EXECUTION
The ADFL mechanic was intentionally simple; it could be played at home with nothing but dice, a laptop and some really good internet.
TABOO brokered a deal with Australian-funny-guy-with-nothing-else-going-on-right-now, Andy Lee, who came on board as our commentator, campaign front man, referee and when required, coach.
We shipped ADLF playing kits to 70 of the top footy players across the country and prepped them to bring their team colours, game faces, laser precision rolling hands and a readiness to Zoom for their lives.
Each match featured a champion player from one of the 18 AFL clubs, a coin tosser, home-schooling Auskickers, diehard fans, and some special guest appearances from David “Kingy” King. The games came fully loaded with all the cues and rituals of the real thing, including pre-game warm ups, the broadcast graphics and the sponsor messages.
Over a four week period, the ADFL fixture mimicked the AFL home and away season draw: nine games per round, kicking off with a Friday night blockbuster and coming home with an epic Sunday arvo claaaaaaaash! The games were broadcast on the AFL Live Official App, AFL.com, Telstra TV, and the social channels of AFL players, Clubs, the AFL and Telstra via IGTV and Facebook Premiere.
Each game was about six minutes long (showing there is no such thing as ‘duration best practice’ when it comes to good content) with a weekly highlight package that would give the AFL a run for its money. We leveraged the power of the remaining AFL players to share the content on their social channels, for their fans to get behind their team mate and club.
With Australia's borders starting to close, travel bans and strict social distancing measures in place, we were faced with a less than easy production challenge. Turned around with only two weeks between idea sign off and Game 1, the entire campaign was produced remotely from the homes of host Andy Lee, AFL stars, production, agency and client teams.
At the end of the gruelling ADFL season, North Melbourne emerged victorious, proving once and for all, that the world really is upside down.
Case Study - https://vimeo.com/449949142
Andy Lee IGTV - https://www.instagram.com/tv/B_67nQmg78C/
Player – Patrick Dangerfield IGTV - https://www.instagram.com/tv/CAfFTSXJF5f/?hl=en
Telstra Brisbane v Richmond FB - https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=270896114067669
Telstra Essendon v Geelong FB - https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=264240684761339
Sydney Swans v Geelong Cats: https://vimeo.com/427264945
Essendon Bombers v Gold Coast Suns: https://vimeo.com/427269489
EVIDENCE OF EFFECTIVENESS AND SUCCESS
● 300 hours of entertaining branded content produced (remotely) for Australians (15M reach) during a time when they were craving connection to their favourite sport
● 36 games of ADFL featuring 70 of the best AFL players in the country, hosted by one of Australia’s most loved personalities, enabling Telstra to deliver 25M Brand and 5G integrations/mentions
● 3M video views (that's the MCG at capacity thirty times!) from fans who consumed 45K hours of ADFL content at an average above benchmark view time of 43 seconds across all screen sizes – average view time was the highest by a Telstra Facebook campaign in 12 months (5x benchmark)
● 600+ AFL players shared the ADFL Games across Instagram delivering a reach of ~1.4M
● 3x the paid social benchmark Click Through Rate for Telstra on Facebook
● 14 pieces of national coverage highlighted by the Today Show 5-minute package and the Hot Breakfast interview with Eddie McGuire and Andy Penn
● 99% positive sentiment which extended beyond Andy Lee and the players across to Telstra
● 15M reach, of which 12.2M was organic/earned (5.7M reach from Paid activity)