BEST MEMBERSHIP OR FAN ENGAGEMENT DURING COVID-19

Chelsea Football Club – 500 Supporters Clubs

To celebrate reaching the milestone of 500 Official Supporters Clubs in over 100 countries around the world, Chelsea FC hosted an interactive, fan-centred celebration. Crucially, as a result of the initiative, the club gained an additional 137 new Official Supporters Clubs in the quarter following the campaign and increased their Supporters Club membership by over 15% along the way. This rocketed Chelsea’s total number of Official Supporters Clubs to way past 600 clubs; overtaking Juventus and Real Madrid to have the third-most in European football, now behind only Bayern Munich and Barcelona.

Funky Voices – Online Community Choir

The award winning Funky Voices ® was founded and launched in 2007 by Sandra Colston (Musical Director) to meet a need to show how breath-taking collective voices can sound and feel for both the singers and audience; something fresh and new, a choir that sing modern music that can be enjoyed by everyone no audition and no experience needed. All the music/song arrangements are penned by Sandra creating mashups and medleys of classical well known tracks with added twists.
Now in our 14th year Funky Voices sets itself apart from other community choirs offering singers a multitude of varied experiences ranging from once in a lifetime performance opportunities, chances to travel the world and also take part in the recording of albums. Every singer has the fantastic opportunity to learn up to 50 songs per year, perform at over 100 events, tour and compete in music festivals local and worldwide, record multiple albums for iTunes, appearances on TV and radio and perform alongside hugely established music artists.

Federation of Small Businesses – FSB Covid-19 Webinar series

The FSB exists to offer its members vital business services including advice, financial expertise, support and a powerful voice heard in government. And so when the coronavirus struck, threatening not just members’ ambitions, but their very futures, it needed to respond with agility, empathy and understanding of the most effective way to meet their needs. To achieve a greater reach across its membership base and the wider small business community, the FSB decided to utilise webinars as a vehicle to provide trustworthy information accumulated from reliable sources such as the government.

The Covid-19 webinar campaign was not devised for financial gain nor exposure. It was simply to provide as much help and information as possible when it was needed the most. With calls to action to the FSB’s dedicated online coronavirus support hub, the webinars would also act as a vital channel to direct members to a constantly updated information resource they could trust to cut through the confusion of the daily rumours and speculation.

INFLOW Network – INFLOW Global Summit ’20: Rise & Shine

How do you recreate a global influencer marketing summit with 1000 participants, carefully curated experiences, and physical Business to Influencer networking opportunities in the middle of COVID-19 worries? We had to come up with a solution that addressed both the problems in influencer marketing and the ones in the travel and events industries.

We’ve scaled down the event and moved it from the crowded Istanbul to Antalya in the Turkish riviera, creating en exclusive experience for just 78 influencers. We’ve also had to digitalize our Business to Influencer activities and host some speakers via video calls. We’ve had the premises sterilized on a regular basis, kept the social distance even during transfers, and held our gatherings in separate and isolated environments. Medical professionals were always on stand by, and they informed the crowd daily. Had a medical urgency arised, everything was in place to isolate the infected person.

INFLOW Global Summit ’20 resulted in 3.014 social media shares, 451.484.728,80 real expressions, and an earned media value of $9.258.317,69. Not only did this new concept render the event more feasible during the pandemic, but it also brought together a more refined crowd and created a truly exclusive experience.

National Hair & Beauty Federation – Covid-19 Response

National Hair & Beauty Federation (NHBF) is the UK’s largest trade body for the hair, beauty and barbering industry. From the first lockdown it quickly became apparent that accurate and aligned messaging was required across all channels including Membership Helpline, which has dealt with 30,000 calls.

We created a Covid Crisis team with our external PR agency and decided not to speculate, only report/advise on fact. This proved to be one of most important factors in our continuing COVID response campaign and establishing our position as one of the industry’s most trusted sources, resulted in 1500 new Members, huge social media increases and over 2million views of our website COVID pages. Our PR team generated 329 print and 3610 online articles across all nationals and regionals, reaching 50 million unique users. Ultimately, we had the ear of Government and that helped lead to the creation for the first time of a dedicated Personal Care sector team within BEIS (2020). Meetings with the Treasury resulted in salons receiving an up to £18,000 Back to Business Grant (in line with hospitality) and a joint hair & beauty re-opening date in April 2021, unlike after previous lockdowns.

Scottish Ballet – The Secret Theatre

Scottish Ballet is, at its heart, a touring ballet company. They tour across Scotland at least three times a year, and regularly visit venues around the rest of the UK and internationally. When it became clear that, due to COVID-19, the company would have to postpone their 2020/21 winter tour, Scottish Ballet announced plans to debut their first-ever feature-length film – The Secret Theatre.

The film was ticketed (for free, with donations encouraged) via Scottish Ballet’s website and released for a short viewing period in the lead-up to Christmas, encouraging viewers to join ‘live’ – for a sense of shared experience.

The results were overwhelmingly positive. Around 25,000 households booked a free ticket, with a robust audience survey sample indicating a total viewing audience of over 55,000 people – pretty much the equivalent of Scottish Ballet regular winter tour of 50+ performances. A third of viewers were completely new to SB, and over 10,000 bookers signed up to the company’s free Membership programme.

Swim England – Swim England’s Response to the Pandemic

When swimming pools were closed due to the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, Swim England was faced with a quandary it had never contemplated. How would the national governing body achieve its vision of a nation swimming with no facilities? How would it keep its 150,000 members at more than 1,000 affiliated clubs engaged in all aquatic sports when they had nowhere to train? How would it help the 8,000 swimming teachers and coaches plus 2,500 providers of swimming lessons to support their athletes and those learning a vital life skill? Swim England’s team of dedicated staff rose to the challenge by providing written and visual content covering a range of engaging topics for members. It provided the expertise and knowledge so pools could safely reopen and published detailed guidance for operators, swim schools and teachers so they could return to the water as soon as they were allowed. And, importantly, it led the fight to get pools reopened. After the Government didn’t include swimming pools in the first wave of businesses allowed to reopen, Swim England launched the #OpenOurPools campaign – which was backed by more than 55,000 signing a petition in the space of just seven days.