As part of Xbox’s official gaming partnership with England Senior Women's Football Team, the new European Champions, DSM ideated and executed a pre-tournament fan engagement event and multi-platform content activation as part of the brand’s Power Your Dreams campaign.
Working with England’s Ellen White and Lucy Staniforth on brand ambassador deals, negotiated by DSM, we invited two girls teams from FC Mortons, a grassroots football club based in the Midlands, to St George’s Park on the pretence that they were there to pre-record some questions for their football heroes to be answered at a later date.
SSShhhhh! But we had a big surprise in store for them when two of the girls' heroes shocked the 28 excited participants and answered the questions in person. To see the full video of this surprising moment, head over to the Xbox YouTube channel.
But the surprises didn’t stop there. The girls were then given an unique opportunity to showcase their footballing skills in a Xbox inspired drill session with the England stars, who were very impressed with what they saw, before taking part in a Minecraft gaming challenge.
The final shock of the day came for the volunteer team managers (insert names) when our presenter for the day, Lauren Layfield, revealed that Xbox has committed a £25k seasonal sponsorship for FC Morton’s to help support and fund their growth plans for the club so they can continue to power the dreams of young aspiring footballers.
Ben Morton Said “This means everything to be honest, I mean we're all volunteers. We put so much into it, the hours, rain or shine, I mean we've covered everything. And today to bring them here and know what's just happened, it's just phenomenal.”
The whole day was captured working with our partner production agency Zut Media, and was then seeded out through social cutdowns across England, Xbox Global, Xbox UK, player and talent channels, driving views to the main hero content.
DSM also negotiated a content amplification deal with 433 and 433 Women to attend the day and capture Instagram story content and secured a collaboration giveaway of a limited edition England inspired Xbox console which was pushed out to the 51M+ followers across the two pages. This media partnership drove an additional 12M+ impressions and 479k+ interactions.
DSM Head of Partnerships, Jen Davidson said: “It was such a pleasure for the team here to be asked to lead on this campaign for Xbox. The impact that the England Women’s players have had on increasing fan engagement with the female game and grassroots participation is really impressive. We and Xbox were keen to show that with this activation.
“Seeing how much Ellen, Lucy and the wider Lioness squad have inspired these young girls to want to follow in their footsteps was special. Last night’s historic win is only going to continue to grow female football participation in this country. It’s very exciting to see what will happen next.
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