CFL heavyweight Saskatchewan Roughriders rally fans on field and online Saskatchewan Roughriders campaign by Phoenix Group hits hard with impressions and engagement

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CFL heavyweight
Saskatchewan Roughriders
rally fans on field and online
Saskatchewan Roughriders campaign by Phoenix
Group hits hard with impressions and engagement
Background
The Saskatchewan Roughriders are one of eight teams constituting the Canadian
Football League (CFL). Every year, the Roughriders meet sponsorship obligations by
conducting an advertising campaign aimed at connecting with fans province-wide
The call to action for the and maximizing ticket sales.
entire Rider Oath campaign
was to drive people to take
the oath online through
Facebook and affirm their
Opportunity
love for the team. Entrusting Ongoing success in the previous years had lifted ticket and merchandise sales to
Casale with the online all-time highs, making the usual business goal of increasing sales a redundant
element of the campaign strategy; a different approach was needed. Realizing that the club lacked a central
significantly contributed to data repository for its customers, Phoenix Group, the team’s agency partner,
the overall success of our recommended a strategy that would integrate the mass media elements of the
strategy. annual campaign into a fulfillment mechanism to collect data on new fans.
Phoenix Group and the Riders decided to focus on growing the number of
Reg Hamilton Facebook fans. Due to the large number of existing fans – around 76,000 – there
Interactive Director
was a significant opportunity to mine this group of people to reach likeminded
Phoenix Group
brand loyalists. A target was set to increase the number of fans to 100,000: if
reached, this number of Friends would lay the foundation for a powerful customer
database. In addition, the team wanted to continue to lead the league in
merchandise sales, fan avidity, and visitors’ game attendance figures.

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Solution
Rationale: To appeal to the Riders’ fans’ passion and pride, Phoenix Group created
a campaign entitled The Rider Oath. The campaign used radio, TV, out-of-home, and
online advertising to entice people to visit the team’s Facebook page (re-skinned
for the occasion to reflect the look of all Rider Oath related material) and pledge
their allegiance to the green and white.
The Rider Oath Implementation: An open casting call was sent out across Saskatchewan and two
Phrases like, “I will represent my cameras rolled all day capturing real people, in their personal Rider garb, reciting
team, my province and my the oath. The footage was used on the Facebook fan page, where viewers could
fellow fans with honour and click “Like” to indicate that they agreed to also take the oath. In return for providing
pride,” and “inspire the next their personal information, each person who made the pledge was entered into a
generation of the Rider Nation” draw to win one of several Roughrider prize packs.
were used to remind fans to
behave accordingly in the
stands and set a good example
for youngsters, to help keep
the atmosphere in the stadium
family-friendly.

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Online strategy
While traditional media pushed people to the Facebook oath page, the online arm
of the campaign tapped into Casale Media’s expandable Video Overlay Solution
(VOS), allowing users to watch the video and agree to take the oath in a few simple
clicks.
Trigger Ad
Creative: Spawning from an IAB standard display banner, the VOS unit acted as a
gateway to the social network’s landing page and featured a large customizable
canvas where the best fan videos could be compiled and wrapped in the team’s
colours.
Video Overlay
Media: Although the team’s core audience of young families generally lives within
150 km of the stadium, the Riders also know from merchandise, shares and other
products sales data that its audience extends across generations and geographies.
For example, it is in Calgary, in the neighboring province of Alberta, that the
highest number of Rider shares is sold.
The target audience for the campaign was therefore defined as male adults aged
18-49, geo-targeted to the province of Saskatchewan and the Albertan cities of
Edmonton and Calgary.
Reach: the VOS campaign was supported by an auto-optimized, Run-of-Network
campaign using traditional banners, to fully capture the cross-gender, cross-
generational aspect of the team’s follower base. To maximize user engagement, re-
targeting was also implemented, by serving the ad to whoever had visited the
Riders homepage.

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Outcome
The integrated campaign produced outstanding results, with the number of
Facebook fans increasing by more than 24,500 (for a total of 103,679 by the end of
the year). In addition, ticket sales virtually sold out for the year and over 67% of all
CFL merchandise sales were Riders products.
For Casale Media’s part:
• Online ads generated almost 20 million impressions, producing more than
85,000 engagements overall (VOS and standard banners indiscriminately
counted), an engagement rate almost 5 times higher than average
• The VOS campaign on its own generated thousands of video views, with a
click-through rate 15 times the industry average for standard display.
Feedback
“The call to action for the entire Rider Oath campaign was to drive people to take
the oath online through Facebook and affirm their love for the team. Entrusting
Casale with the online element of the campaign significantly contributed to the
overall success of our strategy.”
Reg Hamilton
Interactive Director
Phoenix Group
“The Oath Campaign was the first step of an overall corporate initiative to drive
people to our CRM system. Casale Media’s ad network, MediaNet, helped us to
achieve our goals.”
Ryan Whippler
Director, Communication
Saskatchewan Roughriders