Asda Sporting Chance
At Euro RSCG PR UK we think PR campaigns should be judged on their impact on an organisation’s reputations, its bottom line and the impact on the business itself. Here’s an example of one such campaign, we’d love to show you more if you get in touch.
The client
Asda Sporting Chance is a campaign which we have worked on over the past three years. It’s a unique scheme offering parents the chance to let their children take part in grassroots sport for free. It also provides young elite local athletes with funding with each Asda store adopting one athlete. In 2010, Euro RSCG PR UK was asked to help raise participation levels in the scheme and ensure Asda’s Sporting Chance scheme could achieve a Sporting Legacy.
The Challenge
We were set very specific objectives, with the overall goal to increase participation in grassroots sport through the scheme. Each previous year we had smashed our KPIs and it was helping the scheme become bigger and better – PR was already central to its success and our main task was to increase children’s participation in free sports sessions.
What we did
We adopted a truly local approach and gave journalists throughout the UK five examples of local sports in their area they could contact.
On a bigger scale, we had several key creative touch points to execute our plan:
- In March we worked on an event which saw regional young athletes meet star athletic alumni at a stand out location.
- Summertime saw us unveil the results of our customer survey, revealing just what a barrier cost is to participation in grassroots sport, encouraging 38,000 families to take part in the sessions during summer!
- Seasonal hooks were also important and we were quick to jump on the news agenda. For example, when sports funding was in the news, we worked with Asda to secure a quote from the Sports Minister supporting the scheme.
- We built close relationships with key bloggers such as Martin Lewis and ensured nationally we had links from the Daily Mirror school holiday guide to our Sporting Chance website
- Our athletes also ran their own blogs and we shared these with regional journalists to build relationships between athletes, their regional media and Asda.
The Results
In 2010 69% MORE families took part in the scheme than in 2009, a direct correlation to the level of PR activity. Over 340 pieces of PR coverage reached over 87 million people. In traditional advertising terms, if you are interested, we achieved over £15 for every £1 spent with a PRVE of £880,374 – but we’re more concerned with how evaluating PR campaigns like this could help young people get active.