Situation: Despite Castle Lager being the Springbok’s longest serving sponsor, the four-time winning World Cup champions have more partners than ever before (50+) and many with larger budgets than ours, including the likes of MTN, FNB, Dove Men+Care, Toyota and Nike.

However, opportunities exist for Castle Lager to stand out from the Springbok sponsorship crowd

Brief: We required a solve to:

- Remind South Africa that Castle Lager has been SA’s National Beer for over 125 years. Our golden liquid represents the very best of South Africa with a taste to match a South African thirst

- Cut through the brand clutter and own the Springbok conversation, during Rugby World Cup 2023

Objectives:

20% share of voice of all Springbok sponsors combined, during RWC 2023

$50K earned media

Engagement rate of 2.5%

10,000,000 reach

25 pieces of tier one coverage

Directly impact sales

We invited South Africa into the homes of Rugby World Cup winning Springbok grandmothers. We had beers with 'Bok grans and we enabled our viewer to raise a glass to the women who raised a nation - POV-style.

We produced a branded content series about the people who matter most - 4.4m+ South Africans have been raised by a grandmother and raised a glass to the women who raised our heroes.

We turned the typical Springbok rugby content approach on its head, and interviewed the grandmothers of the national rugby team. Our interviewees then became our 'earned' spokespeople.

#TheGranboks cut through the clutter, generated the highest “share of voice” for a sponsor during the RWC (by more than double); with significant reach results (51m+ South Africans) and more earned media ($250K) than any other Springbok sponsor, and demonstrated that Castle Lager is a South African symbol of community and togetherness.

Insight: 4.4m+ South Africans are raised by their grandmothers. Grandmothers are the backbone of South African communities and our World Champion Springboks (especially for players like Siya Kolisi and Makazole Mapimpi). These matriarchs, however, have never been celebrated. So this presented an opportunity for Castle Lager to stand out from the sponsorship 'sameness'.

Message: Raising a glass to the women who raised a generation

Creation and distribution of assets: We produced a three-part branded content series, about Springbok grandmothers, seeded via social media, and leveraged as our spokespeople for earned media.

Audience: Primary target audience is males between 24-35 but filters through LSM 7-10, 25-45 year olds, all racial groups.

This cohort is sport-obsessed. Castle Lager has always been a brand that represents the values of resilience and unity, bringing South Africans together, through their favourite pastimes. The brand has been an official sponsor of the Springboks for several decades.

Shooting then seeding our branded content series within 10 days of the first South African Springbok game in the Rugby World Cup.

We ran traditional media relations in parallel with social and digital content dissemination to ensure a thunderclap of conversation at launch.

We launched with a teaser, followed by a weekly episode featuring one of the grandmothers, ahead of each RWC Springbok pool game to maintain momentum and consistent campaign build.

We distributed content to media - one-on-one - and pitched bespoke angles to secure interviews for Melody Anderson (Malcom Marx’s granny).

We were able to secure airing of the series on SABC, South Africa’s national broadcaster completely free due to the quality of the content and insight.

Proactively secured interviews and subsequent coverage for The GranBoks in the most influential titles across the country, we trended on social media and obliterated the other Springbok sponsors SOV during RWC.

Media Outputs: With an agile approach, a small budget (0.4% of our total marketing budget) and an execution that 'raised a glass to the women who raised not only a nation, but our Rugby World Cup winning Springboks', Castle Lager delivered the greatest Springbok rugby sponsor share of voice. We achieved 48% SOV - more than double the next best sponsor - according to Pear Media Monitoring services.

We achieved breakthrough reach (51m+ South Africans) predominantly via earned media execution that resulted in coverage across every major TV, radio and digital broadcaster and publication. We secured more than 1,000 pieces of media coverage, 10,000+ consumer social media posts about the campaign.

The ROI (8:1) delivered off a shoestring budget, demonstrates that the powerful insight of highlighting our heroes' grandmothers, stood out in the sea of sponsorship sameness.

Achieved PR Value: R4,096,944 vs Benchmark R1,500,000

Achieved Engagement rate of 8% vs. Benchmark of 2.5%

51 million reach vs Benchmark of 10 million.

Total all-in production budget: 0.4% of total marketing budget

Zero paid media

Accolades to date: Best Ads on TV (International), a Hero (702 Heroes and Zeroes), Orchid (Bizcommunity Orchids and Onions), Featured on Ads of the World and secured Ad of the Month - Marklives.com , Econsultancy's case study of the month

Target Audience Outcomes: Our branded content series resulted in critical shifts for the brand including “represents my national pride” up by 3.9% month-on-month.

Business Outcomes: Bottom line results show a sales volumes increase of 30 percent YOY