‘Anyone For Tennis?’ – Our Marketing Round Up Of Wimbledon
Posted
July 19, 2017
Launched via social media focusing on Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube to target a younger audience, the 60-second video shows the year-round meticulous effort, which goes into every Wimbledon tournament – from everyone to the ball boys and ball girls to the strawberry pickers. Video content is a great way to engage your audience and raise awareness of your products and services, but remember, no one is going to watch a full video on social media. It’s important to remember that you will need to create shorter edits specifically for the platform.
The announcement that there was to be a ‘Wimbledon channel’ certainly made every office based tennis fan look up from their desks. Although not quite match live-streaming (which lots of tennis-mad fans were hoping for), the channel – supported by AELTC broadcast partners – featured a range of daily content, including news, interviews and behind the scenes segments as Wimbledon continues to ‘transform the experience for fans on Twitter, a place where conversation is happening in real time every day.’ Mick Desmond, Commercial & Media Director of The All England Club.
Everybody loves an emoji and where better to express your emoticon feels than in tennis! Originally launched in 2015 by Serena Williams, coining the phrase ‘hashflags’, they have made a return for 2017. So, if any fans want to tweet about the event, once they use #wimbledon or #MyWimbledonMemory the tweet will automatically trigger a tennis related emoji. When implemented in an authentic way, (so i.e. don’t shoehorn in the aubergine for the sake of it) they can be a really great way to help your tweet stand out and help to generate engagement.
As part of a three-year deal, which launched last year to engage with a younger audience, fans will again see themed filters and live stories streamed from the tournament. Snapchat is still relatively new in its infancy of advertising, however, there are more options becoming available. Snap ads, geo filters and sponsored lenses are all great ways to get attention and engage with your audience.
Ever struggled to find your nearest strawberries and cream vendor when you were at Wimbledon? Well, your struggles are over! You can now ask your pal, Fred! As part of their IBM partnership (which you can read more about in our Wimbledon sponsorship blog, written by our sister company ECHO), they have stepped up their existing app with the release of artificial intelligence (AI) Fred. Named after the legendary Fred Perry, the aim is to enhance the user experience (in a similar style to Apple’s Siri) with users attending the event being able to ask ‘Fred’ questions and directions. What’s even better is the questions will be monitored and reviewed to improve the service for next year!
Obviously, Wimbledon has a huge marketing budget, to fund this multichannel strategy. However, as we’ve said before, there are always things you can learn and take away for your own marketing strategies. As they cleverly showed in their ‘a year in the making’ video, preparation for the next Wimbledon starts as soon as the latest event has ended. Currently, there isn’t any trouble selling tickets to Wimbledon, but a challenge they have identified is staying current, which is why they are working to future-proof themselves. Marketing planning is a regular task – a long-term plan or strategy should be in place and then short-term monthly plans should come out of this, responding to market events, risks and opportunities. So, as soon as your annual event ends, what are you going to do next?
Well first, evaluate your activity, but second? Start planning!
;