The Everyday Tactician campaign is relevant for Brand Experience and Activation because it was a first-of-its-kind initiative to put a gamer into a real football club, promoting the launch of Football Manager 2024 on Xbox. Football Manager is the world’s most advanced football simulator. Some gamers spend thousands of hours playing it. Xbox offered them the opportunity to use those skills in a real job in the football. 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 our 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 Game Pass, Xbox showed the power of gaming. They partnered with Bromley Football Club to announce a job as a football tactician. The only way to apply was through FM24 on Xbox. Nathan Owolabi, a Football Manager fanatic and Wembley Stadium tour guide, secured the job. Nathan’s journey from gaming chair to dugout was filmed in a documentary on TNT, the UK’s biggest sports channel. The documentary explored the similarities and differences between the real and virtual worlds as Nathan overcame his shyness and bonded with the team, some of whom initially doubted his gaming credentials. Nathan brought his skills and experience from the game to the team’s backroom working on data-based team selection, opponent analysis and tactics. His work helped the club secure their best league performance in their 130-year history, proving that a gamer can change the game of football.

Our approach was to focus our communications primarily on the community of passionate football and gaming fans, people who would be excited about this unique opportunity to use their football management skills in the real world. For Xbox to win fans in the community they needed to actually give back and do something meaningful not just produce comms or a stunt. This approach gave the idea credibility and generated a massive amount of hype, helping the story break through from sports pages to front pages with earned PR. The primary target audience was Football Manager gamers and football fans who would apply for the job at Bromley FC or encourage their friends. The secondary audience was football and gaming fans who would watch the documentary and follow the story. The final audience was the mainstream audience who would hear about the idea through press and engage with the content.

In November 2023, to launch FM24 on Xbox Game Pass, 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. Outlets spanning BBC Sport, Daily Mail, Hypebeast, The Athletic and foreign press covered it. We also ran targeted ads on social media and LinkedIn. After an intensive selection process Bromley interviewed three gamers; 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.