Advertising Case Study

Umbro
Company Background
Umbro is an English sportswear and equipment brand. Founded in the 1920s, it is the current partner of The Football Association (The FA) and the English national soccer team. Its products are sold in 90 countries worldwide.

Facebook Executive Summary

Client:

Objective
In June 2010, Umbro ran a Facebook campaign that aimed to increase brand awareness and sales revenue. The campaign also sought to drive more users to Umbros Facebook Page, the free public profile that enables companies to share their business and products with Facebook users on an ongoing basis. The Facebook campaign was an extension of Umbros ongoing Tailored by England campaign, which, according to Tom Burrow, Umbros Digital Communications Manager, was designed to celebrate Umbros support for the national soccer team, while also establishing Umbro as a culturally interesting brand that creates high-quality and well-designed products. Mindshare served as Umbros planning and buying agency for the campaign.

Objective: Achieve brand uplift and grow the number of people connected to the Umbro Facebook Page Solution: Run a one-day reach block at the height of World Cup fever with Facebook Ads emphasizing Umbros official links to the English soccer team Key Lessons: By targeting its reach block as widely as possible, Umbro gained far more connections to its Page. In fact, those outside the demographic females and people over 25 years old and coming fresh to the brand, responded to it more enthusiastically The extra engagement the reach block created has translated into increased purchase intent for Umbro products

Approach
Umbro made a media buy on Facebooks Home Page called a reach block, which guaranteed that Umbro would reach its target audience over a 24hour period. Umbro ran the reach block, targeting all users on June 23 2010, the day of Englands final World Cup qualifying match against Slovenia, when soccer excitement was reaching a peak in the UK.

The reach block brought us real feedback on purchasing intent. Engagement has always increased following previous campaigns, but this time weve got results that will impact on our bottom line.
Tom Burrow, Digital Communications Manager, Umbro

Advertising Case Study

While previous campaigns had made use of Facebooks anonymized and aggregated targeting to aim at Umbros key demographic of 16- to 25-year-old males, this campaign was a lot broader. We were hoping to achieve brand uplift by taking it as wide as possible, says Tom. Umbro ran a mixture of four Like Ads encouraging users to connect with Umbros Page as well as one Poll Ad the first time theyd used one inviting users to predict who would win the match. Users then clicked through to Umbros Facebook Page where they could watch a video expanding on the Umbros relationship with the English team. The ads focused on the England shirt and its three lions crest, because wed seen from previous campaigns that it makes for a powerful, emotive visual and a high click-through rate, says Tom.

Results
33,000 people connected to Umbros Page on the day of its reach block, plus an extra 20,000 spread over the next couple of weeks. Since June, the number has risen from 55,000 to 120,000 an increase of 110 percent Umbros one-day reach block generated 34,989 Likes, 133,239 poll responses and 14,673 video plays on Umbros Facebook Page Umbros reach block generated 241,920 total engagements and 51.6 million impressions Following the reach block, campaign awareness of Tailored by England among previously hard-to-reach demographics rose significantly by 7 percent among females and by 17 percent among those over 25-years-old, according to a survey on the campaign by research firm The Nielsen Company Facebook users who declared a purchasing intent for Umbro products after the Facebook campaign rose by 6 percent, the Nielsen survey found The same study also found that the association between Umbro and the England Football team among Facebook users surveyed rose 6 percent after the campaign

Advertising Case Study

For Tom, these results prove that Facebook is a platform that delivers where others cant. I dont know any other platform, on the Web or elsewhere, that has a consumer spending an average of 15 minutes on it every single day, he says. Its a great place for a brand to get an ongoing dialogue with consumers. We like to engage on a one-on-one conversational basis, which allows for a lot of interaction and feedback.

The Future
Having achieved brand uplift, Umbro intends to continue to engage the greater Facebook audience it created with its reach block. Since June, interaction has increased and more people are finding the brand, says Tom. But as well as uplift, the reach block brought us real feedback on purchasing intent. Engagement has always increased following previous campaigns, but this time weve got results that will impact on our bottom line. Thats something weve never been able to show before, and now that we can demonstrate it, it makes the Facebook platform a lot more favourable going forward.