Sported Appoints WePlay To Boost Community Clubs Around The UK

Sport for development charity Sported has appointed WePlay as its digital agency in order to drive awareness of community clubs.

The digital agency has been appointed to conceive and execute a pilot marketing campaign to drive attendances at community clubs amongst 16-25 year olds in lower socio-economic areas across the UK.

The campaign, entitled ‘LEAP IN’, will support a selection of 2,600 UK wide Sported partner community clubs.

Using insights derived from analysis of the consumption habits of this demographic, WePlay’s campaign features spoken word and rap lyricist Emmanuel Speaks, and draws upon inspiration from trending music videos and gaming graphics. 

With research identifying cost, accessibility and lack of confidence as key barriers to entry for physical activity for low socio-economic groups, the lyrics and ad copy have been crafted to confront these commonly experienced concerns, in order to resonate with and drive maximal engagement from the target audience. 

Stephanie Green, Senior Campaign Manager, WePlay, said: “Based on our audience analysis it was clear that video gaming and current music were passion points we needed to encompass. We wanted to ensure that the campaign video could be a standalone piece of content that our audience would not only resonate with but want to engage with and share. Producing a track and stylised music video which conveyed the campaign message and contained gaming references ticked all of the boxes and we are really happy with the result.” 

The hero campaign will be launched across social platforms in participating regions of the UK and will feature specific audience targeting in order to reach more sedentary individuals. Bespoke creative and granular postcode targeting will also ensure awareness of individual club initiatives in relevant areas to boost sign-ups and attendances at the local level.

Nicola Walker, CEO, Sported said: “It is exciting to be using social media to drive participation from this user group. We hope by signposting young adults in deprived areas to community groups already in existence we can overcome some of the barriers to participation and see activity levels increase. Having WePlay as a partner has been invaluable to the process of curating the right message/creative and targeting the correct audience.”

Luca Massaro, CEO, WePlay said: “WePlay is incredibly proud to partner with such a fantastic charity in Sported. This campaign has been developed specifically to combat the challenge that communities are facing up and down the country. We all know the power that social media can have and are excited to be able to support Sported with the delivery of such an important message.”

The three-week campaign will aims to demonstrate how the power of social media advertising can help clubs achieve their attendance objectives, with a view to the project being rolled out across the UK to all of the 2,600 community clubs that Sported supports.

Sported – Level Up, Leap In [2020] from WePlay on Vimeo.