Infiltrating a new audience whilst not alienating the existing was the core challenge with the launch of the new England Football kit in early 2009. Taking this icon of English football, which had undergone a complete re-design to being an icon of English culture allowed us to re-define the replica shirt whilst saying something bigger about football as part on English culture. Historically, launching an England kit has been simple and formulaic, but we knew that if it were to truly infiltrate new audiences, credibly and effectively, it required a non-traditional approach. All this was set against a recession landscape at the same time as Umbro increasing the price of an England shirt.

We created an integrated campaign that was underpinned by an influencer seeding strategy and saw us reach out to a powerful network of global opinion formers. The campaign was designed to create content and assets, pre, during and post launch that would drive reappraisal and fame. A bespoke built multi purpose ‘energy space’ was at the core of the campaign offering a platform to showcase and retail the new kit exclusively. Further to this we created iconic shots of John Terry and Wayne Rooney and offered these to selected titles as media exclusives. We also partnered with Vice Magazine, Konami and Facebook to bring together some of the UK’s hottest up and coming creative talent and spread the word via exclusive content and competitions seeded out to key sites, blogs and networks.

Results:
All in all a truly successful Award Winning campaign that has initiated a shift in positioning and perception of Umbro within new audiences. £3 million worth of coverage was delivered in 3 months. 28 million adults (58% of the population) were reached 7 times delivering a solid platform on which to build in the run up to, throughout and beyond the 2010 World Cup. 20,000 shirts were sold in the first 24 hours

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