Nuts WKD Football Awards - Winner of AOP Cross-Media Project Award 2008

WKD and IPC Media's Nuts magazine joined forces to create an irreverent campaign which fitted seamlessly with the tastes of the players, fans and both publisher and client brands alike. From a national pub chain, to radio, TV, the web and an outdoor ad campaign around football grounds, the WKD Nuts Football Awards were everywhere, engaging their target audience absolutely.

The IPC Ignite Nuts Team accepting their AOP Award, from MC Hardeep Singh Kohli

Consistency of Brand

Beverage Brands (WKD) and Nuts worked together to create the first set of awards for football that fitted seamlessly with the tastes of the players and the fans: a genuine celebration of football.

Qualitative research revealed that Nuts’ unique humorous take on football and unparalleled access to star players were a unique selling point. For football results, they would go to a national newspaper, but they came to Nuts for a laugh and for the title’s closeness to players that tabloids simply can’t match.

WKD also identified that a fresh and irreverent approach football was key to its brand identity too. The two brands united to engage and capture the Nuts audience with a multi-platform campaign, in which online development played a critical role in bringing the awards to life and engaging the audience.

The Awards helped to develop a much needed brand personality and longer-term advertising and strategic strategy for WKD.

Creativity

Creativity was at the heart of this project. It was critical that the content remained entertaining and engaging during the 13 week period and across multiple platforms:

• Dedicated microsite included daily blogs, photo galleries, a weekly celebrity pundit blog, interactive quizzes, voting and videos
• Bespoke stunts and award PR for WKD, including a football chant master class, which was covered by Sky Sports among others
• Walkabout, sponsor of Dodgiest Barnet Award, drove in-bar voting and gave away wigs in bars nationwide
• Nuts’ MySpace and Facebook pages used to maximise exposure and drive online voting
• A 30 minute TV programme was filmed at the live awards ceremony with MTV, TMF, VH1 and Nuts TV all airing it
• WKD supported this with a heavyweight outdoor campaign based around football sites and a major takeover of their own brand site

Every aspect of the campaign engaged Nuts’ audience through creative and innovative delivery, which resulted in a significant lift in site traffic.

Evidence of added value to brand

Wherever young men in Britain were - in their local Walkabout, listening to the radio, reading Nuts, surfing the ‘net or watching TV, the WKD Nuts Awards was there:

Whether you judge this by time spent watching the videos created (15 hours), total readership exposure (15.4 Million), or the number of votes driven by in-bar voting (10, 000), The WKD Nuts Football Awards delivered a massive audience to this project, which was delivered through a multitude of platforms. Given the fact that Nuts is only a five year-old brand, this is a big achievement.

Objectives

• To drive a 30% increase in votes for the awards year-on-year
• To deliver a 25% increase year-on-year in PR value
• To deliver 50% more page impressions and unique users
• To deliver £100K more value to beverage brands

Results

• Almost 200% increase in channel visits
• Over 300% increase in voting
• Almost 350% increase in PR value

These were measured by a pre and post campaign quantitive on-line research with men aged 18-34 years old (sample size 500 for each.)

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Judges’ Comments

"A fantastic level of submissions that clearly shows the level of commitment to cross-media projects. This project delivered impressive numbers, demonstrating the impact of channels working in unison. A truly cross-media project that utilised print, online and TV."