Liverpool F.C. TV (LFC TV) is the dedicated official channel for Liverpool Football Club (LFC). Studiowide had previously created a series of videos for the channel to use as their promotional materials for the pre-season tour.
Whilst these videos were in production, the LFC TV marketing team gained an insight into our Marketing Strategy capabilities, and as a result, were impressed enough to hire us to consult with their marketing department, prior to the following year’s pre-season tour.
Challenges
One of the critical points that we raised during our previous project for video production was, what we felt, a fragmented and slightly rushed approach to the pre-season tour campaign.
In addition, the club felt that there may be some mixed ideas about how and where they should be targeting their LFC TV channel. To compound the issue, messages that were being communicated right now were quite generic. This meant that opportunities to reach out and resonate with the target audience were being missed.
Overall, the net result was communications that lacked the impact the messages deserved.
In order to overcome these challenges, fresh ideas were required, as well as someone who could direct the different stakeholders within the LFC TV teams and, at times, challenge the thinking and rationale behind the media planning process. This proved a particular hurdle as everyone had individual objectives that they themselves had to achieve for their department.
It has been an absolute pleasure to work with the fantastic team at Studiowide. Thank you so much for all of your hard work at such a demanding time. We are delighted with the campaign.
Solution
Working from our strategic framework – proven to create effective marketing communications – we designed a series of marketing workshops that we ran within LFC TV, as part of the pre-season tour planning process.
We began by identifying the different audiences who we planned to target. Step 1 was to first identify the audience(s) based on their common characteristics, starting broadly before narrowing them down.
Next, we developed the personas. These were hypothetical profiles for each of the audiences that we had identified. This step was a critical component of bringing the teams together on the right messages to the right people, at the right time. We took extra care on this step as this was something that was currently missing, contributing to fragmented and “one size fits all” communications.
We then outlined some key objectives with the team, this helped us to understand their individual needs and interdepartmental goals. A common mistake at this point is to set non-specific objectives. We ensured that all objectives had metrics and were time bound.
Once we had our personas and set the objectives, we then crafted the messages. (Working with such a large team of creative people – including the anchor presenter of the TV channel, we underestimated how much that people were chomping at the bit to throw their creative ideas out).
This was the creative bit that everyone was waiting for. Our experience has told us that no one likes to plan, but everyone loves to dive straight into the creative planning. This is like sailing a ship without plotting a course.
With Strategy, Audience, Objectives, and Messages determined, we then led the team through the process of identifying the optimal channels for delivering the marketing communications. Whilst few companies have the resources to fully exploit all possible marketing communications channels, LFC TV is pretty well staffed and has quite a large marketing and creative department. This allowed us to pursue a number of marketing channels which to push the communications through.
Results
Following a number of workshops, countless jugs of water and coffee, and flip-chart paper, blu-tacked to every inch of blank wall space – the LFC TV marketing department now had a solid marketing communications plan to take forward and use as their blueprint for creating the assets that would be used to deliver the messages for the next pre-season tour.
We thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of working with such a high-profile football club. We’ll be watching out for the new communications filtering their way into the market.
“It has been an absolute pleasure to work with the fantastic team at Studiowide. Thank you so much for all of your hard work at such a demanding time. We are delighted with the campaign!” Catherine Gilbertson. Liverpool FC TV
