CorpComms Magazine

In marketing, it is very rare that you face a challenge as simple as Premier Rugby faces this spring. That is, to sell one more ticket for the Guinness Premiership Final than we did last year.

So far, so straightforward. The trick is that, in doing so, we have to break a world record and sell out the second biggest stadium in Britain. All over again.

Last year's Guinness Premiership Final recorded the highest ever attendance for club rugby union fixture anywhere in the world with 81,600 fans filling Twickenham Stadium. Now, having raised the bar that high, our challenge is to go one better.

Just to give an idea of the challenge we face, it's worth looking back at the marketing communications campaign we put in place last year but first of all, a bit of context about the game that is the finale to the domestic rugby union season.

Premier Rugby is the umbrella body for the 12 Guinness Premiership rugby clubs. It is responsible for delivering the commercial and broadcast revenues as well as marketing the league itself. Over the course of the season, between September and April, the 12 clubs play each other home and away. The top four teams qualify for semi finals, the winners of which contest the Guinness Premiership Final. The winners of this are crowned Guinness Premiership Champions.

MONEY SPINNING OPPORTUNITY

The final itself represents a crucial piece of commercial inventory for the league, providing a showpiece finale to the season for fans and sponsors alike. It also represents a significant revenue generation opportunity, with the considerable ticket receipts being distributed equally amongst the 12 clubs.

Whilst the capacity of Twickenham Stadium is close to 82,000, attendances for previous Guinness Premiership Finals had never previously exceeded 60,000 and have been as low as 28,500, for the 2002 final between Gloucester and Bristol.

A number of contributing factors have meant that the match hasn't quite achieved its potential. In relative terms the Guinness Premiership Final is still in its infancy, with last year's match being only the sixth to be staged. As such, fan loyalty towards the event, whilst growing year-on-year, has nonetheless been limited.

This has been partially due to initial scepticism of the play-off format, which was completely new to English club rugby union when it was introduced for the 2000/01 season. It has therefore taken time for supporters and media to fully accept the notion of a 'Grand Final' that determines the league champions, rather than the team that finishes top of the table taking the honour.

The timing of the semi finals also means that the two finalists are not known until a fortnight before the big game. Given that the focus for the first few finals was to sell as many tickets as possible to fans of the finalists, the small window of opportunity undoubtedly limited our ability to optimise sales. Likewise, because the match had never sold out, there was no sense of urgency to compel fans to buy tickets.

But many Guinness Premiership clubs actually have fairly small supporter bases, which make it difficult for them to sell out Twickenham even with an extended lead time. Average crowds at league matches are around the 11,000 mark so, even if both finalists were to bring double this to Twickenham, that's still some way short of 60,000 - let alone a capacity crowd.

Furthermore, fans are faced with an ever increasing number of opportunities to watch rugby at international as well as domestic level, with more games than ever taking place at Twickenham. As such, competition for the 'rugby pound' has never been so intense.

The key challenge for the 2008 final was therefore to develop a strategy that could mitigate these factors and, ultimately encourage people to buy tickets as early as possible in order to create a sense that demand could outstrip supply by the time the identities of the two finalists were known.

Tickets were put on sale at the beginning of September to link in with the start of the season. This gave a much longer lead in than in previous years as well as presenting a valuable PR platform as it tied in with the hype generated by the launch of the new season. The nine month sales period was sub-divided into six distinct 'sales cycles'.

Prices were restructured to provide three categories for adults - 'Good', a highly competitive lead in price; 'Better', the mid-range alternative; and 'Best', the premium option. All junior tickets were set at £10, regardless of where they sat, in order to encourage family attendance.

CREATIVE HOOKS

Each cycle was characterised by a hook or incentive to encourage a commitment to purchase early. This was underpinned by a creative theme flexible enough to be employed during each of the cycles, thus lending consistency to the overall message.

By setting ourselves a series of targets at each stage of the sales cycle, we were able to directly measure progress and tweak the plan accordingly. As sales increased steadily, incentives became progressively less attractive to ensure that the integrity of the event was preserved.

A multi-channel approach to marketing was employed to ensure the campaign hit the right audiences at the right time, using the most effective means, including highly targeted advertising, direct marketing and PR to a combination of traditional, new and social media.

Our success in reaching the target audience through viral marketing and websites such as Facebook has had a considerable influence on the development of our campaign for the 2009 final, for which we are now employing more recent social media phenomena including Twitter.

Early on we identified that, if we were able to gain significant traction around our message of 'the biggest club rugby match in the world', we would be able to attract fans of major sporting events as well as core rugby fans. In the end, our success in doing so had a considerable positive impact on tickets sales and this was reflected in the overwhelmingly positive PR we received in the immediate aftermath of the final.

THE CRUCIAL FAN

In purely statistical terms, the sell out crowd of 81,600 represented a 41 per cent increase on the previous year and over 60,000 tickets were sold before the identities of the finalists were known. Net revenues from the game were up 25 per cent on 2007, leading to an increased pay-out to each Guinness Premiership club.

Crucially, the success of the 2008 campaign and the lessons it provided has meant this year we have been able to develop a programme of activity that has led to ticket sales outstripping even last year's performance.

Our campaign theme - urging people to become fan number 81,601 at this year's final - is paying dividends and creating a sense of urgency amongst our target audience.

By the end of March, we had already sold 50,000 tickets, some three weeks ahead of where we were at the same point last season. The ambition of selling just one more seat to break our own world record might just be achievable. 

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