CLIENT SUCCESS
IFF – Men’s U19 World Floorball Championship
THEIR STORY
Floorball is a fast, exciting and inexpensive sport that resembles indoor hockey. The International Floorball Federation (IFF) hosted the Men’s U19 World Floorball Championships in May 2019 featuring 16 teams from leading floorball nations around the world in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This tournament was the first time an international floorball event was held outside of Europe.
THE CHALLENGE
The IFF and Floorball Canada needed to educate the Halifax community on the sport and the U19 Men’s Tournament to get people to attend and support the event. Floorball Canada chose Halifax marketing firm, BeResponsive Media, as their marketing and brand management partner to handle all the communication elements for this landmark event.
SOLUTIONS
BeResponsive Media, a Halifax digital marketing agency, saw an incredible opportunity to generate interest for the Men’s U19 World Floorball Championships through an extensive marketing plan that integrated both traditional and digital marketing tools. In partnership with the Local Organizing Committee (LOC), we created a 1-year plan that started with educating the local community about the sport. This involved touchpoints with schools, businesses, charities, and minor sports associations. As the time neared the event dates, we ramped up the media push to saturate the market with the brand messaging across the city.
Branding: BeResponsive Media created a custom logo design that integrated international, national, and regional elements into the icon. The brand was then integrated into all campaign ads and supporting collateral displaying the U19 Men’s World Floorball Championships across Halifax utilizing traditional and digital media such as billboards, social media, television, print, radio, PR, and web.
Education: An infographic of key statistics and points of interest about Floorball helped newcomers to the sport see the scope it has on an international stage.
Themes: Creating themes for each day of tournament games helped drive different levels of interest and engagement within different target community segments. Examples included Charity Night, School’s day, and Minor Hockey Night to broaden the scope of community interest.
Schools: With the guidance of the LOC, we promoted several events for students that allowed them to attend tournament games. Students were offered Buy 1-Get 1 Coupons that encouraged them to bring their parents/guardians to an evening game after the school-day trip.
Website SEO: BeResponsive Media offered professional SEO services to determine specific keywords to use within the website content.
Social Media: The event was promoted with captivating content such as interactive posts for followers, engagement, and quality infographics. Followers had the opportunity to enter several raffles where they could win tickets to the event.
Media Blitz: Informing locals about the sport and event was a core goal and this was accomplished through an extensive media advertising campaign in the 8-weeks prior to the event consisting of radio and TV ads, press releases, and publicized interviews that allowed people to learn more about the sport.
Branded Apparel: We designed all of the promotional apparel for the event. Here are two samples of tournament shirts and hats.
Logo Design/Branding: A custom logo design and brand design was utilized for the Men’s U19 World Floorball Championship; these were integral to drive brand recognition for the year leading up to the tournament.
Signage: Branding was integrated into the event tickets, on-site signage, arena board advertising, digital and traditional billboards around the city, and the International TV Broadcast graphics.
TV commercial produced with Bell Media.
RESULTS
Through brand development and management, we were successful in promoting the Men’s U19 World Floorball Championship in these three key areas:
- Increasing the sport’s local profile and awareness
- Assisting ongoing development of the sport within minor hockey associations and schools
- Success in driving awareness of community-wide Floorball programs launching post-tournament
Key Tournament Stats
- 80 schools were introduced to floorball from pre-tournament workshops
- 1100 people attended the opening game night of Canada vs New Zealand
- 350 athletes participated in the tournament
- 10,000 tickets sold
- 50 new players in local floorball league, which doubled the program
“If it wasn’t for BeResponsive Media, I don’t believe we’d have had the identity and marketing savvy, similar to many of the professional well-known sports events in North America, and thus the success with our event.”
– Anthony MacNeil, President, Floorball Nova Scotia
