Lawn Tennis Association: Harnessing the “Emma Raducanu Effect” to get the nation playing tennis

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Harnessing the “Emma Raducanu Effect” to get the nation playing tennis

Harnessing the “Emma Raducanu Effect” to get the nation playing tennis

Challenge

After an extraordinary year for tennis, and live sport in general, the exceptional result Emma Raducanu achieved in the US Open in September 2021 firmly put tennis back on the map. LTA were keen to capitalise on the moment and maintain momentum as the young sports star returned home with her winnings.

With just a few days’ notice, we were tasked with delivering a national campaign that leveraged the success of Emma Raducanu’s win and simultaneously drove awareness of the LTA Youth programme (of which Emma was an active member).

What we did

We recognised that to continue the organic momentum, we needed to create a campaign that maximised the reach of LTA as quickly as possible. We also recognised the need to do this at scale; the strategy that was born was ‘Inspiring through Impact’.

‘Impact’ was about creating a campaign that generated as much reach, whilst simultaneously maintaining momentum using frequency and fame. It was crucial for us to own the moment with hard hitting environments at a broadcast level.

‘Inspiring’ was about continuing the journey beyond broadcast into the digital space. There was an element of fame and scale through digital, but it also afforded us the opportunity to create an entry point into the LTA Youth programme by harvesting the demand generated in broadcast through search and further discovery though our broader social and digital assets.

With just a few days to plan, buy and launch the activity, all teams were working flat out negotiating premium OOH inventory (off the back of an incredibly booked up market), fighting for heavy-weight TV spots, while simultaneously working to remove any late fees added to our inventory, so we could maximise value and impact for LTA.

Results

Even with the short turnaround we managed to avoid £160k in late fees on TV, and negotiated savings of £127k in OOH off the back of a 95% sold market​. We surpassed our reach and frequency estimates, hitting 6.5m members of our Youth target audience and 28m adults nationally.

The impact was felt onsite with a 27% increase in sessions & 76% increase in LTA Youth bookings during our campaign vs. pre US Open. We increased the size of the current Youth retargeting pot by 43% - equating to 88,000 more warm, engaged prospects to retarget in 2022.