Advertising Case Study tude de Cas Facebook

Rugby World Cup 2011

Organisation Background
New Zealand will host Rugby World Cup 2011 (RWC 2011), which will bring together the worlds top 20 international rugby teams. Rugby World Cup (RWC) is administered by Rugby World Cup Limited (RWCL), a subsidiary of the International Rugby Board (IRB). Rugby New Zealand 2011 (RNZ 2011) is the local organising committee for the tournament, which takes place every four years, and is responsible for planning and running the seven-week event.

Facebook Executive Summary

Client:

Objective: Build a large, lasting audience around the world for Rugby World Cup and sell tickets for the 2011 tournament in New Zealand Solution: Extensive Facebook marketing campaign using targeted ads, Reach Blocks, a contentdriven Facebook Page and creative applications Key Lessons: Reach Blocks offer a way to kick off campaigns and grow a fan base quickly, but they can also be used in succession to build a campaigns momentum Facebook can be used effectively to drive people to ecommerce and ticketing sites It is important to provide a variety of content to regularly engage fans Facebook can make it easy for marketers to run a truly global campaign, thanks to its massive reach

Objective
Rugby World Cup is held in a different host country every four years, in the same manner as the Summer and Winter Olympics. There is very little handover from host to host in terms of fan data and fan relationships for major events, says Shane Harmon, General Manager of Marketing and Communications at RNZ 2011. Every host is starting from scratch. We wanted to build a community that would grow and provide a lasting legacy from tournament to tournament. RNZ 2011 set out to build a strong, international community for its own tournament in 2011, but RWCL also wanted to create a core audience that would support both RWC 2011 and the sport into the future. The second key objective was to sell tickets, as this is the local organising committees only source of revenue. It needed to put together an international marketing

Facebook has allowed us to make all of the content we publish more engaging for fans; creating more interaction within the community and giving fans a stronger connection with the Tournament.
Clare Wolfensohn, Manager of Online and Communications Projects, RNZ 2011

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campaign that would raise awareness of the event and sell a total of $268 million in tickets to domestic and worldwide audiences. This figure is 10 times the sales target for the second-largest event that the country ever hosted, the British and Irish Lions tour, a rugby tournament in 2005. So to achieve this, the RWC team needed its message to reach hundreds of thousands of people around the globe. because it just extends the reach that bit further, says Clare Wolfensohn, Manager of Online and Communications Projects at RNZ 2011. It helps reach people who might not have an apparent interest in the sport but who still share the interests of their friends. That is a valuable tool. Alongside the Marketplace Ads, the RWC team ran a Reach Block, a premium media buy on Facebook Home Pages and other premium locations that guarantees a marketer will reach 100 percent of its target audiencein this case, all Kiwis on Facebookover a 24-hour period. The objective for the Reach Block was to help build a solid fan base in New Zealand itself. An engagement phase followed, when the RWC Facebook community was activated using rich, varied content, including videos, photos and polls on the Rugby World Cup Page. The IRB opened up its extensive video archive to give fans access to historical RWC footage. Once fans like the Page, its important to keep them connected with the tournament, says Clare. We try to use a range of different content to keep Rugby World Cup relevant and appearing in their daily News Feed. That is what helps us build the relationship with fans over time. With an active and engaged fan base, the team turned to selling tickets, launching ticketing in March 2010 with another Reach Block featuring Premium Video Ads to raise awareness. It also introduced several dynamic applications such as The Worlds Biggest Scrum and The Fan Personality Test. All of the apps were

Approach
In September 2009, the RWC team launched a Facebook marketing push that included creating a Facebook Page, several custom applications, and several different Facebook Ads campaigns. A key decision was made to brand the Facebook Page as Rugby World Cup, rather than Rugby New Zealand or Rugby World Cup 2011, to ensure continuity and legacy. The team divided its Facebook campaign into stages. The first stage was focused on building an audience on Facebook. To do this, they ran a series of Marketplace Ads targeting certain Likes and Interests, demographics and geographies likely to be interested in its message. Likes and Interests targeting allowed the organisation to reach people with a stated interest in rugby. It also targeted people who expressed an interest in other large-scale sporting events, as well as people interested in New Zealand as a tourist destination. Friends of Connections targeting was used, which helped reach the 125 million friends of people who were already fans of the Rugby World Cup Page. We tap into that feature in all of our targeted campaigns

We are finding that Facebook Ads are very, very costeffective compared to traditional above the line media. At each stage of the campaign, we have allocated a larger percentage of marketing budget to digital and social media because of the return on investment that we are seeing.
Shane Harmon, General Manager of Marketing and Communications, RNZ 2011

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simple and sticky, with a strong ticketing message and links to an ecommerce site to purchase tickets. The organisation ran a third Reach Block with Poll Ads in September 2010 designed to keep up the momentum. The ticket marketing efforts were expected to continue until the tournament began in September 2011.

Results
One million people have become fans of the Rugby World Cup Facebook Page. This is one of the largest event communities in the world and a record for New Zealand-based organisations, and those fans are continuing to interact with the Page significantly and consistently Rugby World Cup has reached a global audience, with no one country accounting for more than 20 percent of the fans. At the start, we were expecting to outlay more marketing spend internationally, Shane explains. But Facebook is by far and away our most important international marketing platform now. Ticket sales were on track to meet goals as of early May 2011. In that time period, Rugby New Zealand was at 70 percent of its sales target After search engines, Facebook is the No. 1 driver of traffic to the Rugby World Cup ticketing website RNZ 2011s Facebook Ads have been seen over 397 million times throughout the 15 separate campaigns

The Future
Says Dom Rumbles, Head of Communications for the International Rugby Board, Using Facebook, RWC has been able to connect with a new audience for the sport. Being able to pass the Page from one organising committee to the next has created a strong fan legacy for the tournament and means that we can continue to build the community into the future.

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Facebook is now an integral part of any RWC marketing campaign. The organisations are looking at ways to tie their traditional and social media marketing more closely together. Importantly, they will also continue to focus on building and engaging the community, with marketing activity becoming a natural extension of those efforts. We are incorporating engaging apps and more location-based services using Facebook Places, says Clare. Fans will be able to check in to stadiums and specific matches. After the tournament, management of the Page will be handed over to the next host committee, England 2015, by RWCL to harness the energy for the next Rugby World Cup.