The Challenge

England Rugby, with the women’s "Red Roses" team, wanted to leverage the Women's Rugby World Cup in 2025 as a "once-in-a-generation event" to inspire young families to follow the team and drive young girls' participation in rugby. The client's core objective was to drive mass awareness and consideration of the Red Roses and convert new audiences into fandom, while also inspiring young girls, aged 6-11, to start playing the sport.

The Solution

Fifty’s solution was a dual-campaign strategy powered by creating two unique audience segments, or ‘tribes’. "Big Eventers" who were already highly engaged, and "Exploring Women's Sports," driven by social justice and inclusivity, each was selected for their potential to drive long-term fandom. The FTG Awareness Campaign positioned the team as exceptional and the tournament as unmissable, while the Love Rugby Participation Campaign targeted parents of 6 to 11 year olds with inclusive messaging designed to drive sign-ups. FTG used Amazon Prime CTV for premium, story-led reach, with YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Snap extending excitement to mobile-first audiences. Love Rugby focused on cost-efficient scale and intent capture to drive sign-ups to local rugby clubs. Meta to initiate interest, TikTok to provide cultural lift, local DOOH near rugby clubs for mass visibility, and Search to capture high-intent parents and drive them directly to the sign-up page.

“As a sports organisation, having a media partner who understands both our audience and the data behind the decisions is critical. The team at Fifty have been a long-term partner, using insight-led planning to help us make better, more impactful media choices, helping us to grow the game and drive attendance for both the men's team, and the Red Roses. They’re a great team and I would recommend working with them."

Sally Sheppard Head of Consumer Engagement at England Rugby

The Results

The audience-centric media strategy delivered strong results across awareness and participation. Among the priority Big Eventers audience, the campaign achieved the most cost-efficient CPM, the highest volume of impressions, a 10.02% Video Through Rate, and 332k completed video views. Brand impact was significant, driving a 23.5-point lift in ad recall and a 21.5-point lift in standard brand awareness. Crucially, the campaign shifted perceptions, generating a 9.8-point lift in agreement that rugby is a sport for young girls and women. For participation, TikTok exceeded forecasts, delivering over 18% more clicks than planned.