Wickes have a strong affiliation and heritage in football, so with the highly anticipated return of beautiful game coinciding with Father’s day, they were looking to create content that would drive reach, engagement and brand love, but mostly that would resonate with fans. As it was during the height of lockdown and during a time of social distancing, Wickes particularly wanted to celebrate the nation’s dads and connect families virtually on a special day where families would normally spend quality time together.
Over the course of lockdown, the UK had been getting stuck into some serious DIY during a time when they were bound to their homes. We therefore, sought to create a partnership that acknowledged that the nation as a whole had been very busy, and wanted to find a way to encourage the DIY Dads to ‘down tools’ and take a well-deserved break to enjoy the football again.
In Wickes’ first sports partnership with Sky Media, The #WickesStarting11 campaign was a one-day creative stunt that gave viewers that chance to gift the perfect present for any football loving Dad during the first weekend return of the Premier League. At the beginning of the three must-watch games, Jeff Stelling prompted football fans to nominate their dads via Twitter to join Wickes’ Father’s Day starting 11. Then, at half-time the 11 lucky fathers were included in one of three special half time ads with their names on the Wickes’ ‘Starting 11’ branded football kit.
During the unmissable day of the return to football, the live TV ads appeared during Aston Villa vs Chelsea, Newcastle vs Sheffield United and Everton vs Liverpool – all three aired on the Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Premier League channels while with the latter two also aired on Free To Air (via Pick). Within just 45 minutes, from the time we encouraged viewers to send their Twitter nominations, we produced bespoke ads across remote teams in a live environment, ready to air during half-time (no easy feat, we might add!).
The ads, created by Diagonal View, were the first to use live ad technology outside of betting companies this year. Asking people to tweet using the dedicated hashtag (#WickesStarting11), allowed us to pull the data through, gather, moderate and select (at random) the winners, then add the names into templated commercials and publish the finished product with immensely quick turnaround times.
Picked at random, 33 lucky fathers’ names were featured on the branded football kits for the Wickes’ ‘Starting 11’ during the special ads aired at each of the three matches’ half times with legendary football pundit, Jeff Stelling, uniting the team with the message, “It’s Father’s Day. Let the big man down his tools”.
The partnership also encouraged football fans and dads alike to visit Wickes through an integrated digital campaign including a Sky Sports website homepage takeover, mobile banners, sponsored leader board and billboard, animated GIFs and social posts across Facebook and Twitter.
Sure Men
