Best corporate campaign 2024

To grow its brand, Three concentrates its efforts on three areas: increasing visibility, deepening connections and building trust. It believes that its partnerships with Chelsea FC, where it also sponsors the women’s team kit, and the Samaritans, align with these goals.

Every 90 minutes - the length of a football match - somebody in the UK and Ireland takes their own life. Keen to understand the mental health challenges faced by football fans, Three UK commissioned a survey of 2,000 soccer supporters. This revealed that:

But 27% of respondents also believed that seeing celebrities regularly talking about mental health would help, while 65% wanted advice on how to broach the subject with a friend who appeared to be suffering.

These insights provided an opportunity for Three UK to use football as a platform to help mental health discussions, leveraging on the strong emotional connection fans have with the sport, along with drawing upon its two key partnerships.

Footballing legend Vinnie Jones, a notorious ‘hardman’ of the sport and a former Chelsea player, was drafted in to offer a team talk with a difference. He joined Chelsea’s locker room to address the first team, where instead of match tactics, Jones delivered a message about mental health, stressing the need for fans to talk beyond the game, to ask how peers are feeling and to share their own stories.

In advance of Mental Health Week in 2024, and before a match with Manchester United, a video of Jones’ match talk premiered at Stamford Bridge to 42,000 fans under the banner #TalkMoreThanFootball. This was followed by a broader campaign, airing as a first-in-break TV ad during key matches, while Chelsea’s manager, player and pundits all wore #TalkMoreThanFootball badges.

The campaign was also promoted by Vinnie Jones and retired footballer Wayne Bridge, who candidly admitted in media interviews that he had suffered low self confidence as a player and, only now following his retirement, recognised this.

The message was amplified by paid and organic social media strategies, as well as user-generated content, and branding and visuals at key locations and on the pitch.

A campaign website provided support resources for fans, including mental health training videos featuring Jones, in which he offers advice on what to say to help a friend who is suffering. The series of videos also launched Chelsea’s first Instagram chatbot for mental health conversations.

More than 3,000 fans also participated in virtual and physical mental health training sessions at Stamford Bridge, led by Samaritans and mental health ambassador Dr Alex George.

Jones’ team talk saw 142 million social views and 750,000 engagements, while the campaign was covered in the media across 403 items. And by July 2024, 28% of Three’s customers were aware of its partnership with Samaritans (up from 12% just seven months earlier).

But more importantly, 91.3% of football fans said they were more likely to open up after seeing the campaign.

The judges were impressed by the blend of insight and creativity that was threaded throughout the campaign, along with ‘some proper content, press office and social media skills.’ They added: ‘Well done. Keep the conversation going.’