ALERT SHIRT

Short List
TitleALERT SHIRT
BrandFOXTEL
Product / ServiceFOXTEL SPORTS PACKAGE
CategoryA06. Promotional Items
EntrantCHE PROXIMITY Melbourne, AUSTRALIA
Entrant Company CHE PROXIMITY Melbourne, AUSTRALIA
Advertising Agency CHE PROXIMITY Melbourne, AUSTRALIA
Production Company WEARABLE EXPERIMENTS Sydney, AUSTRALIA

Credits

Name Company Position
Leon Wilson CHE Proximity Executive Creative Director
Sam Harris CHE Proximity Copywriter
Tom Wenborn CHE Proximity Art Director
Sam Maguinness CHE Proximity Head Of Digital Craft
Tom Lear CHE Proximity Digital Designer
Diego Trigo CHE Proximity Technical Director
Tony Chilvers CHE Proximity Head Of Interactive Planning
James Needham CHE Proximity Head Of Brand Planning
Susan Lyons CHE Proximity Head Of Customer Experience Planning
Elizabeth Bierre CHE Proximity Senior Account Director
Shannon Mason CHE Proximity Senior Account Manager
Josh Armstrong CHE Proximity Senior Account Manager
Richard Taylor CHE Proximity Head Of Digital Creation
Di Nash CHE Proximity Head Of Tv Production
Ben Moir Wearable Experiments Co Founder
Billie Whitehouse Wearable Experiments Co Founder
Ed Smith Foxtel Executive Director Of Sales And Marketing
Jesse Stephens Foxtel Head Of Acquisition Marketing
Emma Lambourne Foxtel Acquisition Marketing Manager
Tara Langtry Foxtel Acquisition Marketing Executive

Brief Explanation

The key challenge was to convince our audience that subscribing to pay TV would give them a better football fan experience that justified the price. With no new product features to announce and speaking to an audience who had already heard Foxtel’s message three years running, our objective was to rise above the rational offer and give fans an emotional experience that would get them closer to their team in a way free to air TV couldn’t.

The Brief

Australian Rules Football is a national obsession. As a result, fans already get great coverage of football games on free-to-air TV. For the last two years Foxtel, Australia’s largest subscription television broadcaster, had sent a personalised DM piece to the member base of each Australian Rules Football club with modest success. Those who hadn’t signed up in previous years were unlikely to do so given the offer was actually more expensive than in past years. We needed an idea that would engage fans in a new way and make them evaluate Foxtel’s Fox Footy channel with fresh eyes.

How the final design was conceived

A world first in wearable technology, Alert Shirt literally connects fans to the game, allowing them to feel what the players feel live as it happens. The shirt works with a custom-built phone App that captures real-time game data and sends it via Bluetooth to electronics inside the shirt. Here it is converted into powerful sensations that simulate the live play. Design was inspired by the product’s high-tech sport capabilities, with carbon fibre textures set against a single line of fluorescent cyan. Clean layout and simple iconography created an intuitive user experience, ensuring the campaign remained premium at every touchpoint.

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

4,000 shirts were produced to connect new subscribers and existing valued customers to their teams. In the first week of launch, Alert Shirt reached 2.1 million people through Facebook, created 400,000 Twitter impressions and received 135,000 video click-throughs - not bad for a country of just over 20 million people. Beyond the Australian football community, the conversation took off globally, attracting news coverage from Delhi to Detroit including Sky News, The Wall St Journal, Mashable and Contagious. But most significantly, we’ve changed the rules of broadcast television, transforming professional sport from something you watch to something you’re physically involved in.