Rally pride in home turf – and help Christchurch fans feel true ownership of their team’s wins. Devastated by earthquakes, which had continued for years, and struggling to rebuild, Christchurch had every reason to feel defeated. And yet, here they were, with the most loyal and passionate home crowd, whose unwavering support had cheered on the BNZ Crusaders to more wins on home turf than any other Super Rugby team.

We wanted the Christchurch home crowd to truly feel ownership of the wins, so we celebrated it by setting up another win on home turf – this time for the fans to win for their home turf. Fans could go online to claim their piece of winning home turf. And we hid $25,000 under the actual turf for the Crusaders dug it up live for the fans mid game.

The two week promotion started with letting fans know about the Crusaders winning home turf, with $25,000 in cash being hidden in a random spot under the actual turf.

We let fans lay claim to it on a branded microsite, where they could claim their own one square meter piece of winning home turf, and share their pride on social media.

Promoted through Facebook and eDMs, the virtual stadium was very quickly claimed by fans.

The reveal was set for half time at the final home game of the season when the Crusaders players dug up the $25,000 cash before a packed home crowd. (We filled in the hole before play resumed in the second half!)

Create an authentic experience for which fans would happily trade contact details, eventually leading to an increase in home loan leads:

• Drive at least 5,000 unique visitors to the microsite.

Achieved: 10,537 unique visitors stayed for an average of 3.2 minutes. (Surprising when you realise the Crusaders’ home stadium has a capacity of only 18,000.)

• Ensure at least 50% of microsite visitors register their details.

Achieved: 80% registered their details.

• Identify 1,000 total warm and hot home loan leads.

Achieved: 3,167 became new warm leads, 570 became hot home loan leads.

• ROI of at least 3:1

Achieved: Combining average lead conversion rates, the average Christchurch mortgage, and BNZ’s operating margin, we can calculate $1,305,600 of revenue. Given the campaign budget was $177,000, this allows us to calculate an ROI of 7.3:1 – exceeding our targeted ROI of 3:1.