Gifts that inspire

Client: Leicester City Football Club
Project: Gifts that inspire

Leicester City Football Club commissioned Slate and Mortar to produce their official 2019 Christmas advert that was to be released in the UK and Thailand (where the club has a huge fan base) across all of the club’s owned channels and social media platforms.

The primary objective of their social media marketing campaign was to direct fan interest to the club’s new Christmas-themed retail products via its commercial online shop. Its secondary objective was to generate a ‘good will’ feel around their brand; bringing the players and fans closer together to build a lasting bond through a social media video that could be shared across Leicester City FC’s large UK and international fanbase.

It was clear from the brief that the biggest creative challenge was how to get our football-fan audience of parents and children to relate to a Premier League star. What do they have in common? What moments or experiences have they shared? The majority of devoted football fans all have that one memory of opening up their presents and getting something special at Christmas time – that one item, whether it’s the club’s mascot, favourite strip, football boots, brand new football or scarf; it’s that one keepsake that goes with them for their whole life.

Even though our football stars are now successful Premier League players, they would still have had those same moments and feelings as they grew up. They would still remember their time down the local park, the ‘lucky’ boots or favourite top… that one keepsake that meant something to them.

And it would be through these shared memories that we’d emotionally connect them to our audience.

Filmed across the West Midlands over the course of two days, this case study shows how Slate and Mortar can script, develop and deliver a high-end, social media marketing video that encompasses multiple locations, uses a large pool of child actors and can work closely with professional athletes; whilst working collaboratively with a large organisation to complete the project within a production timescale of just 6 weeks start to finish.

Since being released in November 2019, the advert has been very successful over the club’s social media platforms, with over 1,000,000 views across the club’s major owned channels, and it has generated extremely warm reactions from viewers and even gained press and media coverage for the positive response it received. In addition, and perhaps most significantly, Leicester City FC reported an increase in commercial retail sales up from the usual sales spike around Christmas, which they directly attributed to this social media marketing campaign.

Slate and Mortar has since gone on to produce a number of other social media marketing videos for Leicester City FC and its parent company King Power, which also included a suite of international TV and cinema adverts.