DHL is no stranger to the world of sport. For decades it’s partnered with teams and organisations to help deliver exceptional sporting events. With rugby specifically, DHL is an official partner of the Rugby World Cup and the Rugby World Cup Sevens, also partnering with both domestic and national teams across the globe, including DHL’s home nation, Germany.
The Challenge
Support for rugby in Germany, and the success of the national team has been increasing steadily over the last decade, with the German team now pushing for a place in the Rugby World Cup 2019. DHL, as the main, official partner to German Rugby, tasked Brandwave with bringing this partnership to life at matches throughout the 2017/2018 season and to engage with German Rugby fans to ensure maximum support was generated for both the team and the DHL brand.
The Result
Developing DHL’s existing rugby campaign, ‘Good Hands’, Brandwave worked closely with DHL to make this campaign relevant to the German audience, creating German-specific copy and content.
For several of the German home games throughout the 2017/2018 season, we created pre-match online competitions to engage with younger rugby fans and their families. These included creating and managing share-to-win social mechanics; entrants had to share videos and photos of their passing skills and local youth rugby clubs were also contacted and asked to submit videos. Throughout the season we selected budding young rugby fans as winners of our prize packages consisting of VIP family tickets, player meet & greets, DHL goody bags, and the selection of match-ball delivery children.
Brandwave also worked with the DRV (German Rugby Federation) on behalf of DHL, during the national home games to make sure every spectator had and knew how to use their DHL branded “Boom Sticks”. These not only added to the atmosphere at the games, but also ensured great visibility for DHL across the stadium. Over the course of the season, we handed out thousands of Boom Sticks at matches and created a short piece of content to be shown on the big screens at the start of the match to encourage use of the Boom Sticks throughout the game. We also came up with and managed the DHL half-time entertainment slots and wrote the scripts for any relevant DHL messaging to be given over the loud speaker during games.
“Brandwave represented DHL in great fashion, giving us peace of mind on match days that our fan activation was in GOOD HANDS…”
Fiona Taag
Head of Global Sponsorship & Europe Marketing Communications
