FBD Insurance Win Gold with Olympics Activation

FBD’s sponsorship of Team Ireland was the big winner at the Irish Sponsorship Awards which took place last night, 22nd September at Clontarf Castle.  

FBD was awarded the ‘Sponsorship of the Year’ award as well as the ‘Best Sports Team or Athlete Sponsorship’.  

FBD’s campaign for Team Ireland was rooted in ‘support’ and included a traditional awareness campaign to get the Irish public rooting for our athletes in the build up to the games themselves and the qualifying period. This featured a number of Ireland’s current and aspiring Olympians including FBD Brand Ambassadors and Olympic medallists, rowers Paul and Gary O’Donovan, boxer and gold medal winner Kellie Harrington, hockey player and World Cup silver medallist Chloe Watkins, and badminton player Nhat Nyugen as well as a number of other Irish sportspeople across disciplines including modern pentathlon, cycling, swimming, athletics and gymnastics.   

As the games approached the campaign, in light of covid restrictions, turned to providing tangible support for competing athletes in the form of custom music tracks with messages of support from friends and family who could no longer go to Tokyo. Sound Support took the form of high intensity music tracks, with beats and tempos made out of the recorded sounds of each athlete's workouts, then messages of support from athlete’s loved ones layered on as vocal samples. To ensure the tracks would resonate, Team Ireland Sports Psychologist and former Olympic Hurdler Jessie Barr came on board to review the impact of music on athletic performance and Irish music producer Richard Egan was then enlisted to implement optimum heart rate BPM outputs for each track.  

Brian Healy, marketing manager, FBD Insurance, said “Support is what we do at FBD Insurance, and as official sponsors of Team Ireland we wanted to recreate the great homegrown support for our athletes who headed to Tokyo. We’re delighted to be recognised for all the hard work that went into making this happen.”

Colin Hart, creative director, The Public House said, “It’s fantastic recognition to the collective team on this project. These awards are a symbol of how the best partnerships can drive both pride and visibility for brands within the Irish market”.

Gemma Teeling, managing director at PHD Media, added, “This is a brilliant example of how insight driven ideas can lead to powerful activations that really elevate sponsorships. We were excited about the potential of the partnership from the beginning and FBD strived throughout to activate it in meaningful and unique ways. We are delighted to see the collective work of FBD and their agencies recognised”.

FBD is Ireland’s biggest homegrown insurer with over 500,000 personal, business and farming policy holders nationwide.

The Public House is Ireland’s most awarded creative agency of 2022, driven by the philosophy that ‘Boring Doesn’t Sell’. Their roster of clients is made up of ambitious Irish brands including FBD Insurance, Irish Independent, Dunnes Stores, EPIC: The Irish Emigration Museum and Barnardos.  

PHD Media led the media planning for this three year sponsorship campaign, creating a multimedia approach that encompassed social, Spotify, TV, VOD, OOH and online.