All we had to work with was our sponsorship of the 2010 World Cup. And the knowledge that South Africans are football mad. Could we use football, we wondered, to endear ourselves to the public and sell fuel?

Enter The BP SA United Football League – a fun, crazy league consisting of teams representing diverse sections of the population.

TV commercials showcased their ‘games’. PR got the media talking about them. Print/ outdoor reminded consumers about the ‘matches’. And radio drew people to forecourts where tickets to the Confederations Cup, the World Cup ‘warm up’, were given away.

As soon as the campaign launched in June 2009, we began getting floods of positive feedback. Consumers, as well as the media, were loving the campaign! This was seen formally in the R1074790 in PR value that was generated, and later in the increase in brand health measures that came out in research. But it was most evident in the significant increase in year-on-year sales over the campaign period, with June/August figures shooting up by an average of 6.7%, and by as much as 10.58% in August. Proving that communication that builds brand love, does indeed translate into sales.