In 2023, Australia was the joint host of the Women’s Football World Cup. The world’s eyes were on the showcase of potential from the world’s best athletes. While health insurer Medibank wasn’t a sponsor, as the champions of health equalling potential, it was a chance to enter the conversation. Especially as they had funded research on female athletes to help even the odds.

The insurance category has a habit of badging events rather than having a point of view of them.

We need to be different, we needed:

+A strategy around female sport that connected Medibank’s wider brand POV to women’s football.

+An idea that spoke to the actual culture of women’s football rather than the marketing version – no ‘female empowerment here’.

The test of it was earned media pick up – because if a health insurer could get headlines, we'd done our job.

In the lead up to the Womens World Cup 2023, there were enough players out with ACL injuries that they could form a team.

So Australian Health Insurer, Medibank, made that team- ACL United.

Starring international players united by the same injury, the team became influencers who shone a light on the gender research gap that’s holding female footballers back. @ACL UTD became a vital medical, training and community support resource for athletes of all levels. Hosting training videos, Q & A’s with experts, and motivational tips from the missing players, all housed within a football club that lived on a social platform.

When it comes to women’s sport the conversation is about:

1. Female empowerment

2. Fair pay

But there’s one area that athletes are calling out for help with and that’s fair play.

The sporting system has been designed around the commonalities rather than the differences between male and female athletes. Meaning that female athletes are getting injured at disproportionally higher rates. And it’s not just at an elite level, one in every two Australian girls are ditching sport by age 15 and suffering injuries at much higher rates.

The numbers of ACL injuries are so stark that Medibank’s clinical research teams had developed research with La Trobe University that were proven to reduce instances of injuries, but nobody knew about it.

We needed to show up where footballers and their dedicated fans have a high level of engagement, and our work needed to feel like a real football club.

In the lead up to the World Cup, while all eyes were on the Women’s World Cup, Medibank signed 11 international players who were out with ACL injuries. Each player announced to their social media followers that they’d signed with a new team- ACL United, sponsored by Medibank.

The team directed fans to @ACLUTD, a medical resource masquerading as a football club. There they could find vital medical and training information to help recover from and avoid ACL injury, including training videos, Q & A’s with experts, and motivational tips from the missing players.

The campaign ran in parallel to the World Cup, drawing awareness to the gender research gap holding female athletes back, as well as Medibank’s role in evening the odds through funding research on female athletes with research partner La Trobe University.

100% positive sentiment (which is achieved in only 2% of campaigns)

Over 30 million impressions campaign wide.

But the biggest win is that UEFA is now investigating the issue on a global scale. With the goal of publishing a consensus on ACL injury prevention and management by the summer of 2024, as well as an up-to-date ACL injury prevention programme.