Australia’s homegrown football code, AFL, is tightly woven into the nation’s psyche and culture. As a major sponsor of the AFL for over 10 years, the National Australia Bank (NAB) has forged a trusted relationship with the footy community.
As a sponsor of Australia’s most loved game, NAB positions itself as one that does more than just pay for the privilege of appearing on stadium signage, grounds and players; but one that is truly dedicated to growing the game from the grass-roots level.
At the start of the 2013 season, NAB set out to prove this once and for all by aiming to convert the uncoverted – to ‘Footify’ Australia.
With this iniative in full-swing, NAB turned its attention to one of the biggest days on the Australian calendar – the AFL Grand Final – a day when marketing activities triple.
Australia now the third most multicultural nation in the world. With this in mind, NAB saw the opportunity to recruit more passionate fans and ultimately grow the game by making the Grand Final more accessible to minority groups.
So we created FootifyFM – an ambitious plan to live-stream commentary of the Grand Final in 10 languages via a campaign website. And not only would the game be broadcast in 10 languages, but the commentators themselves.
The response from the nation was outstanding. Many of our commentators were featured on national TV, local press and radio – developing an earned media value of over $1.2 million.
On Grand Final Day, social media was buzzing about the campaign. NAB outshone naming rights sponsor Toyota and accounted for 83% of all sponsor discussion. This discussion was 92% positive (let’s remember, this is a bank after all).
FootifyFM had 40,000 active streams of the AFL Grand Final throughout the match.