RUGBY 7S

BACKGROUND

• The HSBC Singapore Rugby Sevens is part of the World Rugby Seven Series, a series ofinternational tournaments bringing together 16 of the best international rugby sevens teams. (including New Zealand, Great Britain, Argentina, Fiji among others). The tournamentis held in 10 countries across 5 continents, each season.

• In 2016, Singapore secured a 4-year deal to host a leg of the event. In 2020, Singapore obtained an extension to host the event for another 4 years until 2023. However, the Singapore Sevens had to be cancelled twice in 2020 and 2021 due to the Covid-19 Pandemic.

• The event officially returned in 2022 but continued to be impacted, with limited attendance.

• Our agency was appointed through a tender by Singapore Sports Hub to design and executea media strategy for the 2023 edition of the Singapore Sevens.

OBJECTIVES

1. To build brand awareness of the HSBC Singapore Sevens 2023

   
   

2. To draw in wider audiences beyond Rugby Fans; generating anticipation, excitement and demand for the event

   
   

3. Conversions: Targeted call-to-action marketing that will lead to ticket purchases.

   
   

   Campaign Period: 7th Feb to 8th April (2 months)

"BACK, BIGGER, BETTER THAN EVER"

• With the key objective of ticket conversions and the challenges (such as timeline) in mind, we rolled out a omni-channel campaign with a funneled approach, targeted towards the rugby sevens audience (namely affluent, expats, local and regional rugby community.

  
  

• We selected two key slogans for the key visuals that would anchor the key message: "Rugby Sevens is Back, Bigger, Better Than Ever" and "A Rugby Reunion of the Best Rugby Teams and 50,000 rugby fans"

  
  

  

HOME PAGE TAKEOVERS FOR MOTHERSHIP AND ESPN

SEARCH ADS

• Search Ads was one of our best performing tools. (Over 10x Return on Adspend)

• On top of obvious rugby-related keywords and keywords of popular rugby teams/players etc, we also purchased keywords that were more niche to the specific audience, such as name of key players, teams or rugby equipment etc.

• Discovery: we also purchased peripheral keywords of expat associations such as "american association" ,"tanglin club" etc, to help more of the targeted audience "discover" the event

PROGRAMMATIC ADS

Programmatic Ads was one of our best performing tools with a ROAs of over 10X.

• We used 4 key laser-targeting techniques in our programmatics.

1. Specific Lists: Such as "Affluent" or "Expats and "Upscale Foreign Talent" and "Rugby"

   
   

2. Behavioral: Such as those with high intent to travel to Singapore or high intent for attending Rugby ticketing events.

   
   

3. Keywords: Our ads would appear as site banners on sites with our designated keywords in articles.

   
   

4. Exclusions: Those who have purchased tickets would be excluded from our campaign.

SOCIAL ADS, RETARGETING AND EMAIL DRIP CAMPAIGN

Using the Art and Science

Results

(FROM 7 FEB TO 9 APRIL- IN JUST A 2 MONTH PERIOD)

1. Over 65 Million Impressions (Verified and tracked on digital channels only excluding numbers from Radio/TV/OOH etc)

2. Over 200K Unique Site Visitors ( Only direct attributed conversions from our paid ads on Meta, Programmatics and Google with GA.- not total ticket sales)

3. SGD$1M Tracked Converted Ticket Sales

4. Over 40,000 attendees (Over 60% increase versus 2022)

5. (Verified and tracked on digital channels only excluding numbers from Radio/TV/OOH etc)