Situation

Vodafone were the Lead Partner of 2021 The British & Irish Lions Tour to South Africa.

The tour took place behind closed doors with no fans able to travel.

Brief

Showcase the power of Vodafone's 5G connectivity and it's ability to connect sports fans to teams and athletes.

Deliver proof points of Vodafone's new 'Together We Can' brand positioning.

Objectives

Drive brand conisderation

The 8,000 mile Auto5Graph was a pandemic-busting film creative conceived to bring warmth and fan engagement to Vodafone’s sponsorship of The British and Irish Lions and to promote their new brand positioning ‘Together We Can’. With fans unable to travel to South Africa to watch matches or meet any players, using the power of Vodafone 5G connectivity we brought a unique ‘world first’ shirt signing and player appearance to life. Using a robot arm and rapid data transfer across low latency Vodafone 5G, we surprised four Lions superfans with the opportunity to receive their very own Lions jersey, which the players signed live on a video call with them from 8,000 miles away in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Wearing the Lions jersey is a prestigious honour, with players acting as guardians. As the front of shirt sponsor and principal partner, Vodafone had a responsibility to keep fans connected with the team and maintain their famed spirit.

So when COVID-19 changed the landscape of the tour, turning it into a behind-closed-doors event, we became responsible for creating the most connected tour ever, getting fans closer to the action (albeit remotely).

Our technology would be the enabler of this as we set out to #UniteThePride.

We identified four hero fans to take part in the activation and deliver the surprise of a life time. Our hero Rocco was discovered after his rugby impressions below up on social media. The other participants were all due to travel on the tour until Covid stopped their plans.

The activity was delivered from start to finish in less that 2 months. The main challenge of the production lay in the fact that the final piece of activation was filmed live with an appearance slot of 8 minutes for each Lion, which made it complex, highly intense and genuinely nerve-wracking. It also set Vodafone apart from their 5G competitors as it was truly authentic.

The video assets were amplified across a dedicated PR plan along with a social plan that spanned Vodafone, The British & Irish Lions and player channels.

The 8,000 Mile Auto5Graph delivered 188 pieces of editorial news coverage with 191 million reach and 98% of coverage attributed to Vodafone, and with ridiculously high view-through rates at 42% (versus 15% benchmark) across an 8 million+ reach on social. In the COVID world dominated by content to promote sponsorship, this piece of creative achieved the cut through that we all aim for, with the highest metrics across the campaign. Brilliant characterisation, combined with the pinnacle of robotic and data technology, brought something innovative and engaging to Vodafone's sport sponsorship and truly underpinned their technical prowess and brand messaging of 'Together We Can'.

There was a 23 point increase in non-user consideration amongst those aware of the sponsorship. Across our brand measurement objectives, the results were equally startling with ‘Vodafone is a brand I trust’ rocketed up 23 percentage points & ‘Vodafone.