Sports PR
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The video below shows football freestyler Dan Magness hours before breaking the World Record for keepy uppies. This publicity was part of our work for football charity and social enterprise Alive & Kicking, which employs adults in Kenya and Zambia at a fair wage to make footballs, netballs and volleyballs that are then are donated to children in refugee camps, orphanages and schools in sub-Saharan Africa.
The ball on Dan’s head made its way to the World Cup. As the football equivalent of the Olympic Torch, the ball was shepherded from London, through Europe and Africa by the Spirit of Football team all the way to the World Cup opening ceremony South Africa. We secured wall-to-wall coverage for Dan’s record-breaker, with some brave TV news crews escorting him on his way. So that the Spirit of Football lads could share their journey with football fans, we secured and wrote a weekly blog for Four Four Two magazine. Take a look at the Sky Sports footage below and click here for the blog.
We continued to raise Alive & Kicking’s profile in the months following the World Cup. This included an article authored by Substance’s Keegan in The Observer, focusing on the ethics in the sports ball industry, and a piece by Henry Winter in The Telegraph, all about the difference Alive & Kicking makes to its employees’ lives in Africa. We also secured coverage across the national newspapers and women’s glossies to promote a T-shirt range which fashion designer Luella Bartley put together for Alive & Kicking (buy yours here!).Towards Christmas, our focus was on giving an Alive & Kicking ball as a gift, so we secured lots of coverage in gift guides, and we placed a feature in Glamour magazine which introduced readers to Alive & Kicking’s Sughra Hussain, who at 29 is running the enterprise’s Kenyan operation.
We were brought on board to raise local awareness of two Tesco initiatives: its sponsorship of the Race for Life and its voucher scheme to provide sports equipment for schools and clubs. We arranged for some ‘racy butlers’ to help female shoppers with their bags and tell them all about the nearest Race for Life. For the voucher scheme, local children received free sports coaching sessions from a premiership footballer at the Tesco store. The result was blanket local coverage on TV, radio and newspapers, including media interviews with Tesco spokespeople explaining more about the initiatives.
Our publicity projects for national five-a-side football company Pitch Invasion doubled its player numbers to 20,000 in less than 18 months. We also created Pitch Invasion’s first female five-a-side league, something the company had previously been unable to do. To gain media attention we organised a match between Chelsea FC Ladies and an amateur Brighton team who were keen to find more teams to play with. Within a week of the match, and with some great publicity, another five teams were on board and the league was off to a fantastic start.
Much of our day-to-day work focused on local publicity – launching leagues, writing match reports and season reviews for papers in different cities, and finding quirky and newsworthy stories for local TV and radio. We also focused on trade press, targeting leisure centres that could build valuable income streams by hosting Pitch Invasion leagues. Creative ideas securing us national media coverage included a poll of Pitch Invasion players to find their fantasy all-time England five-a-side team and the greatest ever England player.
Pitch Invasion founder and managing director, Andrew Hill, says: “Substance PR has exceeded our expectations of what a PR agency can do. Time and time again, Substance has demonstrated in-depth knowledge of our industry and a passion for achieving results. I have been extremely pleased with their commitment to deliver, and with their courteous approach. If you are looking for a PR team who are creative and determined to help you succeed, then I thoroughly recommend Substance.”
Hampshire five-a-side specialist JD Fives hired us to promote its new league to potential players. We ran a PR campaign in the media and launched a telemarketing campaign to encourage employers within a 10-mile radius of the league to enter a work team. This scored JD Fives two full divisions, helping the league off to a great start.