IN-DEPTH CASE STUDIES
WILL COLLINSON, HEAD OF MARKETING AT THE ENGLAND AND WALES CRICKET BOARD
opportunities, rather than concentrating on creating them. “We wanted to get more people into
our digital channels and then use that data,” he says. “One hundred and twenty-five thousand new people were engaging with our channels between June and August. We did a piece of research at the end of the Ashes and 71 per cent of our respondents said they were more likely to attend a cricket match next year and 52 per cent were more likely to play. That’s really important for us.” One interesting aspect of
the Twitter campaign was the ‘wall of support’ – a live feed displayed in the England team room pre-match where users posted their support for the players. “The wall of support was immensely powerful because it makes fans feel part of it,” says Collinson. “They could put questions to players and so on. Without something like that, there’s a danger that a campaign like this can become static because you have no release for the hype.” For a project like this to work, of
industries learn from the way the ECB maximised fans’ engagement? “We’re lucky,” he says, “because
passion is something people really bring to sport and, as I say, you need to provide an outlet for that passion. You also need to be comfortable with social media. If people slag you off, you have to accept that that’s fine. We’re in a position now where, if that does happen, we can live with it because there’s so much good stuff that comes from social.”
YOU’VE GOT TO GIVE PEOPLE AN OUTLET FOR THEIR PASSION”
course, everyone involved needs to be fully on board. Did that present any challenges? “In any organisation, you have to sell
the idea to the right people. You need the team’s management behind it. You need to understand what you want to achieve. Budget was a constraint so we had to prioritise on spend. We weren’t really able to buy media so it was about brokering relationships elsewhere. Those were some of the challenges we had to address in order to get cut-through.” Collinson acknowledges that being part of the media agenda benefitted the ECB’s campaign but also stresses the importance of quality, original content. So what can marketers in other
HOWZAT? According to Twitter, 3.4 million Tweets were posted about the series (1.6 million of those using #Ashes - the hashtag of ECB, Cricket Australia and broadcasters) and #RISE was used 168,000 times during the series versus 77,000 for Cricket Australia’s #returntheurn. The ECB’s site (
ecb.co.uk)
racked up more than 16 million page views and the YouTube channel (
youtube.com/ ecbcricket) got four million
views. ECB’s ‘Daily Ashes’ emails from TwelfthMan - the Official Fan Community of England Cricket - were opened 900,000 times. A total of 311 local cricket clubs held Club Open Days over the five Ashes weekends, where thousands of guests watched the live action on Sky Sports. The takeaway here? “It’s vital to get
consistent integration right at the very outset,” says Collinson. “If you have that as a filter from the start, everything else will come together.”
ecb.co.uk
55 issue 20 january 2014
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