AFL Victoria Themed Rounds Campaign recognised for communication and marketing excellence

The promotion of Australian football through a series of campaigns has been recognised with AFL Victoria being named as the winner of the Campaign Award in the third Leisure Industry Communication and Marketing Awards.

Presented by Australasian Leisure Management, the Award recognises the AFL Victoria State-wide Themed Rounds Campaign and the powerful role Australian Football plays a powerful role in communities, particularly in its heartland of Victoria.

With more than 1100 football clubs across 82 community leagues, Australian football has a footprint in every Victorian community and has an important role in influencing community conversations, raising awareness of social issues and supporting fundraising efforts.

In its award submission, AFL Victoria explained “in the past these (promotional efforts) have been largely fragmented, with individual clubs and/or leagues championing these causes in isolation of the broader football network.

“In addition, football clubs are microcosms of the communities that they operate within. Therefore, societal issues inevitably impact on clubs, their members, volunteers, supporters and participants.

“As the peak body for the sport in Victoria, we saw that we had a role to play in this space. In 2017 AFL Victoria developed a Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy to assist our clubs and leagues in dealing with a variety of issues impacting on their communities as well as lend our voice to raise awareness on key societal issues.

“In implementing this, the communication strategy/campaign revolved around three key pillars: 1. Identifying the key issues impacting on our leagues and clubs; 2. Developing a partnership with a leading industry organisation who are experts in the field and 3. Consolidating efforts across AFL Victoria and our clubs and leagues via state-wide themed rounds.

“Three key partnerships and state-wide themed rounds have been developed and implemented across the 2017/18 seasons. These are: Love the Game Round (in partnership with the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation); Beyondblue Round (in partnership with beyondblue); and Sockit2MND Round (in partnership with the Fight MND Foundation).

“The messaging of each themed round was tailored in collaboration with the relevant partner, and from a communication perspective had several consistent elements. This included selecting a specific weekend to promote the partnership across the state, utilising the collective reach of our communication channels from a state, regional and local perspective and seeking buy in from clubs and leagues across Victoria to be part of a movement that was occurring state-wide.

“As an example, messaging flowed from our most high-profile competition (the VFL) and promoted via its weekly live Channel 7 broadcast, right down to a local club in a small country Victorian town.”

Commenting on the Award, Australasian Leisure Management Publisher Nigel Benton stated “AFL Victoria’s achievements in building on its role in the Victorian community and developing promotional and communication campaigns in line with its overall social responsibility objectives is truly remarkable and makes them an appropriate winner of our Campaign Award.

“As an integral part of Victoria’s fabric, AFL Victoria using its status to communicate on social, medical and mental health is worthy of massive praise and recognition.”

Explaining the Awards, Benton added “these awards recognise excellence among individuals, organisations, businesses and government.

“When done well, marketing and communications build a brands reputation and add to the bottom line of any business. At the same time, communications and marketing are also about dealing with crisis and standing up to scrutiny, something that several of our winners have had to face in the past year.

“The awards recognise a cross section of activities from international businesses to start-ups, industry icons and national organisations to small operators, showing that effective communications and marketing is not just for big operators, and is more about a commitment to sharing what an organisation excels at.”

Winners of the awards covered a wide geographical area across Australia and New Zealand.

Images courtesy of AFL Victoria.