The Brief

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 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 an existing and new audience. Our strategy was to remind them of the ferocity and fearlessness that first attracted their loyalty, by leveraging the club mascot in a way no one had ever seen before.

Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation

We created a campaign called ‘Feeding Time’ which saw two Sharks club legends travel to Cape Town, South Africa, to find the fiercest version of the Sharks mascot and then feed their opposition’s jerseys to them. The captured destruction became online content, which fans could share with friends as the ultimate pre-game ‘taunt’, all 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 for auction during the season via their website, with proceeds going to Shark conservation.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

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. Club memberships were up by 16.7% just two games into the season. Importantly, Sharks fans had something to get excited about again and their opposition definitely knew who was on the menu in 2014.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

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 footage, we created one 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.