BACKGROUND
Drummond Central and Stoke City Football Club’s (SCFC) relationship started in 2010. When first working with SCFC, Drummond Central’s challenge was to define a ‘Premier League brand’ for a club that had been recently promoted. A brand that fans of all ages would be proud to support, regardless of the results on the pitch.
Football fans can be incredibly loyal to their club, some don’t even miss a match in their lifetime. It’s this sense of pride and loyalty Drummond Central aimed to capture and celebrate in every campaign and piece of comms for the club. This long lasting relationship has allowed Drummond Central and SCFC to work together across many different areas for the club: brand story and guidelines, interior design of the training ground and stadium, ticket and membership pack design, retail campaigns to drive kit and merchandise sales, season ticket campaigns and even corporate sponsorship documents to attract commercial partners.
Working closely with the SCFC’s in-house team, Drummond Central review and update each piece of fan comms on a regular basis – ensuring the tone is in line with how the club is performing and how the supporters are feeling.
SCFC finished the 23-24 season really strong taking 15 points from a possible 24 in their final 8 games, creating a really positive feel around the club and the city. Drummond Central’s ambition was to capitalise on this positive momentum and make the most of the retail opportunity that accompanied this through three effective kit launches - home, away and third.
Football is a difficult marketing landscape. Retail success is often dictated by sporting performance. Whilst the ambition was to produce a campaign that would deliver regardless of this, the positive end to the season was a opportunity here.
Using this, the strategy was to use a tiered launch to optimise sales across each of the three kits. Drummond Central focussed their creative ideation on the bespoke and unique elements of each kit to really appeal to the SCFC supporters and reinforce the strategic inspiration behind each of the kit designs.
The kits for 24-25 each had their own unique aspects within the design - a kiln design linking back to the bottle kiln heritage associated with Stoke-on-Trent. SCFC worked with Drummond Central and Jon Enoch (photography) to exploit these unique designs and create a top tier kit launch campaign.
TARGET AUDIENCE
In a nutshell - all SCFC supporters. Local, not so local, younger, older, male, female. Following such a positive end to the 23-24 season, the idea was to target all supporters that were part of this positive momentum and passion. This doesn’t mean you had to have a seat at the bet365 stadium every week; if you identify with Stoke City Football (SCFC) - then you need to get the 24-25 kit range.
Hardcore SCFC supporters: With football, there is always a never-ending sense of loyalty that comes with a good section of supporters. These were one of the key target audience that needed to be considered in this campaign. They follow SCFC home and away - they live and breathe SCFC. They spend a lot of their time and money following SCFC- they wear SCFC colours and truly identify with it.
Season ticket holders & regular game-goers: They attend all SCFC games, or at least every one they can get their hands on a ticket for. They may not attend as many away games as the ‘hardcore’ SCFC supporters, but SCFCis still a huge part of their life.
Potters outside of Stoke: We cannot forgot the non-local SCFC supporters. Similar to the season ticket holders and game-goers, if they had the opportunity I am sure they would be at the bet365 stadium every week. Their love for SCFC is still vast and they still identify with the crest and the colours. The launch will naturally consider these given the other audience categories.
Younger Potters: Whilst regular game-goers are a key target audience member, younger SCFC supporters also need to be considered. They idolise the players on the pitch - it is their dream. Seeing the players in the kits is key to reaching this consumer.
Fashion football fanatics: The change in the footballing industry towards leisure/causal wear with football jerseys has also created an opportunity here. It is common now for football tops to be designed with a fashion focus - to be worn as leisurewear rather than as a ’sport kit’ or just to show your support for a team.
CLIENT CHALLENGE
Like any football club, SCFC release a new home, away and third kit ahead of every season. As noted, football is a difficult marketing landscape where retail commercial success and sporting performance are undoubtedly intrinsically linked. The overarching challenge with this campaign year-on-year is to try and make the sporting performance irrelevant to ensure consistent sales each season. How do you create an emotional connection to the kits regardless of how the club is performing each year?
Designed by Macron with the club, SCFC set Drummond Central a key challenge to ensure that the unique selling points were represented throughout the planning and creative ideation in this project. We needed to ensure that the launch not only looked amazing - the unique designs had to feature in some capacity. The home kit had a strong link to Stoke City’s heritage with Pottery kilns woven into the red stripes; the away a striking blackout kit never produced before, and the third a quite unconventional but bold coral design.
SCFC asked us to consider how our promotions can avoid ‘single purchases’ from consumers. Depending on the supporter type from the target audience, there are often scenarios where supporters choose their favourite kit and purchase just that. We had to persuade supporters to purchase all three kits.
AGENCY SOLUTION
Drummond Central delivered a staggered kit launch campaign, each launching a month apart. Each kit stood out in its own right and were to be seen as individuals, rather than a suite, helping to navigate the potential of single-purchase supporters. To achieve this, it was necessary to ensure that each set and specific kit creative was undoubtedly different compared to each other.
Seeing each kit individually, at different times, helped encourage multiple kit purchases from individual supporters. In a 2 day shoot, how do you capture x3 different kits each with their own campaign look and feel to allow for that staggered launch? This incurred meticulous production planning.
Creative concepts and production planning was strategically devised. The art direction was key:
For the home kit, an on-location shoot at the historic Pottery Museum - developing a strong link to the heritage kiln pattern which is woven into the fabric of this kit design.
A dark and moody shoot to really embrace the full blackout away kit.
A bright coral backdrop beautifully designed and printed to truly portray the eccentric colours associated with the exotic third kit design.
Production & concepts allowed for delivery of a wide range of content that brilliantly paid homage to the bespoke elements of each kit. This production and art direction was key in creating that emotional connection to each kit, whilst also highlighting the unique design elements within each kit.
THE RESULTS
SCFC’s home kit was a huge success. Revenue on the first day of launch was up 135% compared to the previous year. A total of 749 shirt units were sold in store on launch day.
It was the biggest day of sales for the Club shop since May 2016 when the club released both 16/17 home and away kits - just after finishing 9th in the English Premier League.
Launching on the 28th June, the away kit sold consistently, too - trading 982 units in the first day of launch.
SCFC also sold out the initial order on all third kit jerseys.
With the above in mind, all kits sold successfully navigating the challenge of sporting performance, the USPs of each kit and ‘single purchase’ consumers.
The campaign was not only successful in regards to sales, but the client challenges were also considered throughout. A successful staggered launch with a key focus on the USPs of each kit design was crucial in delivering the commercial success.
High levels of supporter engagement was also noted, particularly with the home kit. Using the kiln pattern / item in a number of comms prior to the launch, SCFC sparked interest in from their supporters and even debate as to whether it was going to be the new crest. This built traction ahead of the home kit launch, which answered everyones questions but was also really well received.
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