| Title | IT'S FEEDING TIME |
| Brand | CRONULLA SHARKS |
| Product / Service | RUGBY SPORTS CLUB |
| Category | B01. Corporate Image & Information |
| Entrant | GPY&R Sydney, AUSTRALIA |
| Entrant Company | GPY&R Sydney, AUSTRALIA |
| Advertising Agency | GPY&R Sydney, AUSTRALIA |
| Name | Company | Position |
|---|---|---|
| David Joubert | GPYR | Executive Creative Director |
| Bart Pawlak | GPYR | Executive Creative Director |
| Dean Mortensen | GPYR | Creative Group Head |
| Aaron Swan | GPYR | Account Manager |
| Bohdi Lewis | GPYR | Planner |
| Jason Kempen | GPYR | Copywriter |
| Jennie Burton | GPYR | Copywriter |
| Liam Seymour | GPYR | Art Director |
| Bradley Stapelton | GPYR | Art Director |
| Elissa Maine | GPYR | Content Director |
| Marton Papai | GPYR | Post Production |
| Ambrus Deak | Amb Music | Music |
| Charles Maxwell | Ikraal | Director Of Photography |
| Natalie Frischknecht | VML | Executive Producer |
| Maree Frakes | VML | Producer |
| Andrew Dowling | GPYR | Managing Director |
| Ben Coulson | GPYR | Chief Creative Officer |
| David Joubert | GPYR | Art Director |
| Bart Pawlak | GPYR | Copywriter |
One of the most popular football codes in Australia is Rugby League. And one of the most popular teams are the Cronulla Sharks. However, a recent run of bad luck saw the club disgraced, losing revenue and, most importantly, their members and fans. So, our objective was to launch their 2014 season in a way that would re-ignite their current fans passion and drive membership among both an existing and new audience.
The Cronulla Sharks Football Club has always inspired fan loyalty on account of it’s fierce and fearless reputation. So, rather than trying to inspire fans with a campaign that featured the usual on-field action, we created a campaign that leveraged it’s mascot and genuinely captured these two qualities. By travelling the globe to find the meanest Sharks to feed their opposition jerseys to, we did it in a way that no other code around Australia or the world has tried before. Arming the fans themselves with engaging tools to rally their friends and generate an immediate and resounding response.
We created a direct campaign called ‘Feeding Time’ which saw two Sharks club legends travel to Cape Town, South Africa, to find the fiercest versions of the Sharks mascot and then feed their opposition’s jerseys to them. The captured destruction became interactive online content, which fans could share with friends as the ultimate pre-game ‘taunt’ throughout the season. Game day posters gave fans the chance to use their smartphones to see jerseys getting destroyed. Before sharing with friends. And the real tattered jerseys themselves were framed as memorabilia and auctioned via the club website, with proceeds going to Shark conservation.
The campaign sent ripples, not just through the Sharks community, but through the entire league and the nation. 11,415,957 saw the content within the first four weeks of what is a season-long campaign, with all major TV networks and news media outlets around Australia featuring it. Importantly, club memberships were up by 16.7% just two games into the season. Sharks fans had something to get excited about again and their opposition definitely knew who was on the menu in 2014.