BLUIE

Short List
TitleBLUIE
BrandTHE STAR
Product / ServiceBLUIE
CategoryA04. 360° Videos
EntrantBASHFUL Sydney, AUSTRALIA
Idea Creation BASHFUL Sydney, AUSTRALIA
Idea Creation 2 TSE Sydney, AUSTRALIA
Additional Company STREAKER Sydney, AUSTRALIA

Credits

Name Company Position
Tim Chenery Bashful Creative Director
Dan Barrett Bashful Senior Copywriter
Guy Marshall Bashful Strategy Director
Felicity Andrews Bashful Senior Account Director
Paul Kind tse CEO
Chris Leffers tse Account Director

The Campaign

Introducing BLUiE, the first bionic Blatchy and the 18th member of the Blues. We worked with our friends at Streaker to build a bespoke robot that was loveable, engaging and a little bit cheeky. He could be controlled with an iPhone app, featured a 360 degree VR camera in his head, was completely mobile (on most surfaces!) and could project a very distinctive voice.* *It is rumoured that Paul Sironen was actually the voice of BLUiE, we can neither confirm nor deny this.

Creative Execution

We engaged Blues coach Brad ‘Freddie’ Fittler to take BLUiE with him everywhere he went, to training, the team sheds, official team meetings, announcements and pre game warm ups. BLUiE streamed everything he saw through Facebook Live with tens of thousands of fans tuning into every stream. We launched BLUiE six weeks out from game one allowing us to create content all the way through the lead up to the series, in between games and of course on game night.

A four minute lead story on Channel Nine news ain’t bad. As the campaign period only just ended we are still waiting on the Nielsen tracking report to get a full picture of the results. But early signs are good. We had LOADS of media coverage with every major news channel and newspaper around the country covering it. The night before the match Channel Nine news led with a four minute BLUiE story. BLUiE TV including live streams, organic editorial and produced content had a total reach of 4,151,000 without a dollar spent on paid media.

The fans wanted exclusive access, so we gave it to them. The Star are not only a sponsor of the Origin Blues but the major sponsor of the Blatchy’s Blues. They are a passionate supporter group who love to get involved and embrace any chance to get close to the team they love. And in the absence of any team mascot the Blatchy’s had almost become, as a collective, the unofficial team mascot. How could The Star give the Blatchy’s more access than even SMARTWiG gave them while also celebrating their near mascot status within the game? We had to keep in mind that this was an authentic grassroots group sponsored by casino. Badging and other traditional sponsorship strategies were highly likely to alienate them, so we needed to be authentic and speak their language of irreverence and humour.

Links

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