The Objective
Passion for football is like no other. Starting as a child, fans will follow their team around the country, and if they're lucky enough, around the world. Throughout this time, they'll experience the highest of highs, and lowest of lows and still return every week to cheer their team on with the same love and passion they had at their first game.
Sports Direct are well aware of the passion involved in football and wanted to engage with these supporters, and those who don't quite get it, about the power of sport, how it connects people, why it bonds communities and to demonstrate why it's never just a game.
The Solution
The best format to encourage engagement is a Hashtag Challenge, so in the lead up to EURO 2020, Sports Direct ran their #NeverJustAGame challenge where they asked users to respond to their videos answering the question 'Tell me football is more than just a game, without telling me it's more than just a game'. To make the challenge even more enticing they enlisted the help of some of football's biggest names such as Eric Cantona, Jordan Henderson and Jamie Vardy.
As part of the Hashtag Challenge package, Sports Direct also had a TopView and One Day Max In-Feed Ad which featured Bruno Fernandes, and EURO 2020 poster boy, Jack Grealish, asking TikTokers the same question. Users were encouraged to stitch the videos with their responses.
The Results
This campaign ran when football fever was rife across Europe, and a large part of that community were getting caught up in the excitement of EURO 2020 on TikTok.
Throughout the campaign, Sports Direct achieved 2.1 billion video views, with 832,000 videos created by TikTok users showing their love for the #NeverJustAGame challenge. They also achieved an incredible engagement rate of 14.77% successfully proving that football is more than just a game.
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