Kicking goals left, right and centre

The Problem

The WAFL is a proud brand - a brand with authenticity, strength and history.

However, to a new generation of sports fans and families, the brand has faded. Attendances have declined 30% since 2011. The AFL has replaced the WAFL as the premium footy offering, and the competition for attention of the target audience has exploded. While nostalgia adds magic to the brand, memories of "the good old days" won't drive new audiences to the WAFL. The challenge was to develop the proposition which would.

The Idea

Making the atmosphere as important as the footy.

We presented catching up with your mates (as well as the footy itself) as two reasons to come to the WAFL, or two ‘wins’. Hearing from your favourite local band and catching a great game of footy? That’s a ‘win/win’. No matter whether your team wins or loses on the day, then, every WAFL game would be pitched as a Win Win.

The Win Win platform was both a strategic and creative launching point for the WAFL’s revitalised brand. It stretched across all 10 teams in the league, with bespoke colour, imagery, and brand associations for each club. In this way, the Win Win became a destination marketing toolkit for every community’s local club, the event activations at every game, and a broader communications platform for the entire league. Everything, from fixtures collateral to media releases to advertising to on-field signage was branded in the new Win Win style.

A Win for Every Team

The WAFL needed to represent 10 different teams for one very stretched marketing budget.

It wasn’t enough to simply create a visual identity and style guide for the WAFL - we needed to create a design system that every team could adapt, apply and own on a grassroots level.

So we created designs that could be adapted to every teams’ primary and secondary colour palette, featuring actual supporters from every region and community, and the teams’ star players. These templates could be created from Canva, Keynote, or InDesign templates by in-house club teams, and run from their own social media accounts (both promoted, sponsored and organic).

The media buy took this personalisation to another level, as every club was geo-targeted with outdoor and digital media buys that featured the right club colours and messages in the right community, around some of the most iconic entertainment precincts in each suburb. This helped tie the WAFL Win Win proposition to the idea of enjoying a day or night out in the community around the game itself, and made a day at the WAFL more of an event that would appeal to a younger demographic and young families alike.

From the coffee strips of Fremantle to the restaurants, cinemas and nightlife of Leederville, each community received a bespoke media buy with individual creative executions of the Win Win campaign.

The Results

If the goal was to get people into the WAFL again, we certainly kicked a couple from 50. 

Game attendance is the highest it’s been in recent years with a 53% increase in round 1 attendance and a 75% gate revenue 2 months post-launch. We also reached more people than ever before with a 191% increase in Facebook engagement and a 66% increase in website visitation. Whatever team you go for, that’s a good result.