Wickes partnership with Sky Sports scored


Wickes partnership with Sky Sports scored

To celebrate Father’s Day and the return of Premier League football, Sky Media and Diagonal View helped Wickes create dynamic and reactive TV creative through a socially-driven advertising campaign broadcast on Sky Sports. The partnership, brokered by The Story Lab, not only generated over 2,200 entries in just 6 hours, but it made it into the top 5 trending hashtags that day, and brought the nation’s families together during a trying and socially-distanced time.

Wickes has a strong affiliation and heritage in football, so with the highly anticipated return of the beautiful game coinciding with Father’s day, it was looking to create content that would drive reach, engagement and brand love, but mostly that would resonate with fans. As it was during the height of lockdown and during a time of social distancing, Wickes particularly wanted to celebrate the nation’s dads and connect families virtually on a special day where families would normally spend quality time together.

Over the course of lockdown, the UK had been getting stuck into some serious DIY during a time of being confined to home. Wickes, therefore, sought to create a partnership that acknowledged that the nation as a whole had been very busy, and wanted to find a way to encourage the DIY Dads to ‘down tools’ and take a well-deserved break to enjoy the football again.

In Wickes’ first sports partnership with Sky Media, The #WickesStarting11 campaign was a one-day creative stunt that gave viewers that chance to gift the perfect present for any football loving Dad during the first weekend return of the Premier League. At the beginning of the three must-watch games, Jeff Sterling prompted football fans to nominate their dads via Twitter to join Wickes’ Father’s Day starting 11. Then, at half-time the 11 lucky fathers were included in one of three special half time ads with their names on the Wickes’ ‘Starting 11’ branded football kit.

During the day of the return to football, the live TV ads appeared during Aston Villa vs Chelsea, Newcastle vs Sheffield United and Everton vs Liverpool – all three aired on the Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Premier League channels while with the latter two also aired on Free To Air (via Pick). Within just 45 minutes, from the time Sky encouraged viewers to send their Twitter nominations, it produced bespoke ads across remote teams in a live environment, ready to air during half-time.

The ads, created by Diagonal View, were the first to use live ad technology outside of betting companies this year. Asking people to tweet using the dedicated hashtag (#WickesStarting11), allowed Sky to pull the data through, gather, moderate and select (at random) the winners, then add the names into templated commercials and publish the finished product with immensely quick turnaround times.

Picked at random, 33 lucky fathers’ names were featured on the branded football kits for the Wickes’ ‘Starting 11’ during the special ads aired at each of the three matches’ half times with legendary football pundit, Jeff Stelling, uniting the team with the message, “It’s Father’s Day. Let the big man down his tools”.

The partnership also encouraged football fans and dads alike to visit Wickes through an integrated digital campaign including a Sky Sports website homepage takeover, mobile banners, sponsored leader board and billboard, animated GIFs and social posts across Facebook and Twitter.

With over 2,200 entries in just a six-hour window, sports fans and particularly fathers were treated to the ultimate public display of affection for Wickes’ campaign. Conversation and interaction with Wickes’ Twitter profile was trending with #WickesStarting11 within the top five hashtags during the day and the following media delivered:

Shelley Allison, head of core marketing at Wickes said “This was our first partnership with Sky and it gave us the chance to celebrate Dads and father figures, creating moments of joy during lockdown. To be the first non-betting brand to use the live ad technology was really exciting, as it gave us a chance to drive real engagement at a key moment in the sporting calendar. We were really pleased with the success of the activity, especially the high levels of positive interaction it drove over a short space of time.”

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