The Everyday Tactician campaign is relevant for Direct because it was a first-of-its-kind initiative inviting gamers to apply for a job at a real football club, promoting the launch of Football Manager 2024 on Xbox. Football Manager is the world’s most advanced football simulator. Our target audience of gamers spend thousands of hours playing it. Xbox offered them the opportunity to use those skills for real. A documentary captured the activation for fans. One gamer was hired and used simulated game data and skills from his in-game experience to help Bromley FC achieve their best season ever.

In the UK, football is the most popular national sport. It has an almost religious following with fans constantly playing, discussing, arguing and dreaming about the game. Bromley FC are in the National League which is a highly competitive league but without the big budgets of the Premier League.

National League sides struggle to hire top talent as bigger, richer Premier League clubs hire the best. Top-tier football is currently being transformed by the increased use of data to win games, with teams of tacticians who use data to inform tactical decisions. But lower league teams are struggling to innovate.

Football Manager is an award-winning football simulation game series that started in 1982. It’s the world’s most advanced football simulator, using real world football data collected by over 2000 scouts across every football league. The game gives you an unprecedented suite of data that only top managers would have access to, helping gamers analyse everything from XG (expected goals) to historical data going back 20 years. In FM you play as a manager and control tactics rather than controlling the players actions directly as in FIFA.

Xbox champions the power of gaming under their current tagline ‘Power Your Dreams’ and in this case they were able to power gamers’ dreams to work in pro football and Bromley FC’s dream to challenge for promotion.

Football Manager 24 (FM24) launched in November 2023. The game is historically a PC game but console is now the fastest growing platform, so Xbox is in a race to establish themselves as the first choice for gamers, rather than their competitor PlayStation. Xbox is the brand which “Powers your dreams” so they wanted to empower gamers to unlock the full potential of their football dreams. Xbox Game Pass is Xbox’s subscription service – a ‘Netflix for games’ – that gives players access to hundreds of games for a monthly price. The brief was to make Football Manager fans see Xbox Game Pass as the best place to play. The objectives were to increase the number of Xbox players of FM24 compared to FM23 and to increase Xbox’s brand association with football.

For the launch of FM24 on Xbox GamePass, Bromley Football Club announced an open job role as a tactician at Bromley FC, the only way to apply for the job was through FM24 on Xbox. To get the job you had to gain the Xbox achievement “Championes” by winning a domestic league and then submit a 1-minute video telling Bromley’s manager why you should get the job. The top applicants were invited for an interview with the Manager, Andy Woodman and the club’s CEO. Nathan Owolabi, a 23-year-old tour guide of Wembley Stadium was given the job. Nathan’s journey from gaming chair to dugout was filmed in a documentary that was aired on TNT, the UK’s biggest sports channel.

A recent survey found that 4/10 UK football fans think they could do a better job than England Manager Gareth Southgate (one of the national team’s most successful managers.). Our campaign targeted the most dedicated fans of football and Football Manager with a challenge that would offer them a once in a lifetime chance to start a career in football. The CTA was “Get a job as a tactician for Bromley FC just by playing Football Manager.” The campaign directly addressed gamers’ dreams of doing the things they do in game in real life and football fans’ dreams of getting to work in the sport they love. Our approach was to advertise it like any other job at Bromley FC, announcing it via Bromley X/Twitter, the Bromley website and LinkedIn, knowing that because of the innovative application process it would echo out to a larger audience.

In November 2023, to launch FM24 on Xbox GamePass, Bromley FC announced an open job role as a tactician, with applications exclusively through Xbox. Manager Andy Woodman told viewers “it could be you” in a viral press conference video on Bromley’s twitter viewed 2M times. Hundreds of commenters claimed “it’s my time” or tagged friends to apply. Rather than showing a CV, applicants had to gain the Xbox achievement “Championes” by winning a league and submit a 1-minute video telling Bromley FC’s manager why they deserved the job. We also ran targeted ads on social media and LinkedIn. After an intensive selection process Bromley interviewed three gamers showignand one was given the job. An in-depth documentary followed Nathan Owolabi’s journey, going behind the scenes of Bromley throughout the season as he helped them challenge for promotion.

- 190% increase in Xbox gamers on FM24 compared to FM23

- 1.5 billion total campaign impressions

- 1.2 million people saw the job advertisement

- FM24 Impressions increased by 416%

- It was the most played Football Manager game ever

- Bromley FC had their highest league position, highest points tally and fewest defeats

- Most successful season in Bromley FC’s 130-year history.