Guinness Six Nations

The Brief

For the first year of Guinness’ title sponsorship of the Six Nations Championship, there were three clear comms pillars that were the primary objectives for the social media campaign. We needed to drive association between Guinness and rugby, enrich the rugby experience for fans, and give meaning to the sponsorship by authentically owning the rugby occasion during the Six Nations.

STRATEGY

The Guinness Six Nations campaign was built around reaching and engaging two key audiences: fans, and flirts. Fans being those people that live and breathe rugby; flirts being the audience that are not necessarily big rugby fans, but get excited by the big games and the experience around them.

We Are Social devised and executed a dynamic and wide-ranging campaign that stretched across the six-week Championship period to reach and engage both of these audiences. In the face of fierce rivalries, our social creative celebrated the humanity and friendship among players and fans that make the Championship so special.

EXECUTION

Six weeks of activity required a host of activations that could entice and engage both die-hard Rugby fans and those less obsessed with the game, Rugby flirts.

From animated stories of humanity and friendship, to reactive community management via our bespoke War Room, dynamic social ads and key partnerships with the likes of Deliveroo, this campaign consisted of multiple activations which helped Guinness to solidify their association with rugby.

Results

Driving association between Guinness and Rugby

320M social impressions, 5M people viewed Giphy stickers and 7.7M cross-platform video views (excluding TVC).

Enriching the rugby experience

198M total engagements on social, 480,000 click-throughs, Facebook conversion rate 4x higher than previous Guinness benchmarks and 5.7% engagement rate.

Owning the Rugby conversation

30% share of voice vs. any mentions of Six Nations, #1 mentioned sponsor of the Six Nations, #1 beer brand in relation to the rugby occasion and #1 beer brand in general social conversation.

AS SEEN IN THE MEDIA

Campaign, 16 Apr 2019

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