We came up with the creative idea of ‘forget dodgy streams’, based on the insight that young people who can’t afford to access our competitors’ subscription-based football streaming services regularly access illicit online streams. These streams present many problems familiar to young football fans, such as buffering, skipping, low resolution, and frequent pop-ups interrupting the action. These are the problems we dramatised in our films, before directing to the BBC’s pristine online coverage instead.

Our ads, which initially captured attention by looking just like the high quality football streams people were searching for, went out on Twitter minutes before kick-off in FA Cup third round games. At this time, many people were searching for streams using keywords such as ‘streams’ and ‘FA Cup’ on the site. Our films would then appear, directing them to our online coverage, and informing them that the FA Cup is on the BBC. Solving their problem instantly. Many chose to help others access the coverage, by liking and retweeting our films to their followers.

The films themselves reached millions of people through BBC Sport’s social media accounts, but we believe the important statistics are the online viewership figures. For the third round games the campaign preceded, online streams increased by 26% on last year, with Twitter and Facebook a major source of traffic. Business targets were not only met but surpassed. There was also the secondary benefit of an increase in average viewing time of 38%. This shows that our films were reaching the fans with most interest in the coverage we were offering, delivering value for the client.