Background
Coca-Cola is universally accepted as the dominant brand in the global carbonated soft drinks market and this also holds true for the UK. The brand entered an initial three-year title sponsorship agreement with the English Football League in 2005. Football League Division One, the level immediately below the English Premier League, was subsequently re-branded the English Coca-Cola Championship.
The sponsorship reflects the brand’s strong global commitment to football which includes primary rights to the FIFA World Cup and the UEFA European Championships.
The brand sponsorship strategy in football, therefore, is to partner major events rather than individual teams. The rational behind this is that Coca-Cola is a universal product aimed at a mass, family audience. As a new sponsor, replacing Nationwide which had been a long-term incumbent with a very professional leveraging programme, Coca-Cola needed to make its mark quickly and a high profile sales promotion was seen as a key method of achieving this. Although the case study concentrates on the promotion in year one (2005) to demonstrate how the sponsorship was initially brought to life, the initiative was repeated in Phase 2 (2006) and modified in Phase 3 (2007).
Objectives
Coca-Cola set out several objectives for the Win A Player promotion, they included:
- To build Coke's football credibility among active football fans in England (9.1m people in total)
- To drive recognition of Coca-Cola's sponsorship of The Football League
- To ensure four-week display across 70% grocery and retail channels
- To deliver four-week volume target
Strategy
The strategy was to target 18-24 year old males, the major followers of League One football, who were identified as both armchair and active football fans. The promotion needed to offer such fans something that would empower them to take the step from merely viewing the games, to pulling together to show their real support by earning a reward they could give back to their clubs. It was also seen as important to ensure that the reward benefited both the winner and his/her team and contributed to the team's future success.
Implementation
Sales promotion agency bd-ntwk devised the promotion with the key proposition being that individuals could 'Win a Player worth ¼ million for your club and £10,000 cash for you'. The promotional mechanic was effectively a free prize draw communicated across a wide variety of touch points. Fans were allowed one entry per day either by text message or online and only had to give the name of their own club. The dedicated website also provided entrants with exclusive goals content, the latest football news, games and a consumer poll. Coca-Cola even changed its colours to those of the eligible clubs.
Entrants also had the opportunity of winning a pair of match tickets in draws that took place every hour of every day throughout the promotional period. The offer was communicated on 210 million packs supported by strong point-of-sale material and a heavyweight TV campaign with bespoke ten-second advertisements. The names of the winning club and fan were announced live on Sky Sports to 1.4 million viewers five minutes before the Championship Play-Off Final in Cardiff.
The key elements used to implement the promotion included:
- Design and artwork
- Print and production
- Promotional cans
- TV advertising
- Press and online advertising
- In-store POS
- Distribution of POS to stores and clubs
- Club activity
- Website
- Hourly draw for match tickets
- Final prize draw
- Announcement of winner
- Response management
- PR
Promotional Mechanics
The promotional mechanics of the campaign were as follows:
The free prize draw offer was communicated on 210 million packs, in TV and press advertising and online (which included participating clubs’ websites).
Entrants had to be 12 years or over and winners under 16 required parental consent.
Entries could be made by text or online. Text entrants were required to text the word ‘player’ followed by the full name of their football league club or Scottish Premier League club. No other league was eligible.
Online entrants supplied the same details.
Entries were limited to one per mobile number per day.
There was one major prize of a player(s) up to the value of £250,000 to be given to the club designated in the winning entry as well as £10,000 to the winning entrant.
The £250,000 could only be spent on funding the acquisition of a newly registered player for the 2005/6 season including transfer fees, the player's wages, VAT on transfer fees and transfer fees and ground improvement levies.
The player had to remain registered with the winning club for at least one season.
The major prize draw was made on May 27 2005 and the winner notified within two days at which time he/she had to confirm their chosen team and maintain the strictest secrecy until a confidentiality agreement was signed.
The winning fan and club was announced live on Sky Sports on May 30 2005.
Throughout the promotional period an hourly draw was made in which entrants could win a pair of Football League or Scottish Premier League match tickets.
Details of available matches and booking procedures were distributed to winners following the release of the 2005/6 fixture lists.
Winners of the match tickets were notified by text or e-mail by 6pm on the day following entry and were asked to text or e-mail back their name, address and postcode. No cash alternative was available.
Within 14 days they received a letter confirming all details.
A list of major and secondary prize winners was available from the offer address to consumers who submitted an SAE.
Promotional Support
Each phase was supported with iconic packaging and themed point of sale material, plus activation kits sent to every club in The Football League (and Scottish Premier League) to encourage them to support the campaign and drive their fans to participate.
Through these kits, clubs were encouraged to run their own ‘Win a Player’ and ‘Buy a Player’ activity, encouraging their own fans to enter. Activity included:
- ball-boy t-shirts
- cheerleader displays at half-time
- displays in Club shops
- PA announcements to fans in the stadium
- screenings of the ads on stadium TV screens and scoreboards
Club Chairmen even recorded their own viral appeals to fans to give their club support, and offered the best participating fan for each cub (our ‘Superfans’) the chance to win limited edition club-supplied prizes.
Phase 2 - ‘Win a Player’ 2006
‘Win a Player’ returned in 2006 with an increased prize fund; £350,000, and added the chance for two additional clubs to win £50,000 each. Five pairs of FIFA World Cup 2006 tickets were also included in the prize draw for consumers entering three times or more. A media partnership with Sky TV’s Soccer AM was initiated and generated more than £80,000 worth of incremental coverage, with on-going updates throughout the campaign and the three winning clubs were announced live on-air at the end of the promotion.
Phase 3 - ‘Buy a Player’
In Phase 3, run in 2007, the concept was revised to strengthen consumers’ ‘belief’ in the promotion and to reward every club.
The value of the headline prize was increased, with a new link to purchase (via on-pack PIN code) to drive transaction (consumers entered a unique code from packs by SMS text message or on-line). Again Coca-Cola gave fans the chance to grab a share of the £10 million transfer fund. One in every two packs won, with winning packs worth anything from 50p to £100,000. There was also an additional bonus draw giving fans the chance to win a spot-prize of £250,000, with the winner announced live on Soccer AM.
The promotion was primarily activated across bottles and cans of ‘Coca-Cola’ and ‘Coke Zero’ and online via a dedicated ‘Coca-Cola’ Football website, plus a multi-million pound integrated media and PR support campaign.
Results
Full results are only available for year one of the promotion, in which Coca-Cola claims all objectives and targets were met. The promotion reached 48% (4.3 million) of the target audience and post promotion research showed that awareness of the Football League sponsorship was measured at 62% against a target of 60%. Awareness of the promotion was measured at 44% against a target of 30%.
The total number of entries was 1.092 million against a target of 600,000 (+82%) in the first year and by the end of year two had exceeded three million. In year one, the campaign achieved 95% in-store displays against an objective of 70%. The sales volume (index) exceeded the set target by 0.4%. The promotion won the Institute of Sales Promotion (ISP) Gold Award 2006 – Beverages.
Conclusion
Coca-Cola’s ‘Win A Player’ promotion is certainly one of the most high profile sports-related campaigns of its era. The promotion appealed directly to the core interests of fans – the ability to help their club. Given that Coca-Cola League clubs generally struggle financially and have significantly lower turnover than their Premiership counterparts, the promotion struck a chord with fans. They are only too aware of the difficulty their clubs face in raising finance and for the winning club, the new player will obviously be considered as having been bought by Coca-Cola.
The promotion also worked through its offer of a prize to the fans offering a double motive for entry and through the concerted build up to the announcement. Fans regularly received bulletins either via email from Coca-Cola or through news stories posted on their favoured club’s websites which showed how many of their club’s fans had entered.
The fact that more than one million entries were received (although some fans entered more than once) demonstrates a very high level of response given that awareness of the promotion was stated at 4.3 million. Overall it is fair to say that the promotion was a major success and helped to inject life into the sponsorship at an early stage and such was its popularity, it was repeated for a further two years.