Hope&Glory explores storytelling with the FA
A recent Hope&Glory advert for the Football Association (FA) won hearts and minds, so we spoke to Alex Royce, the agency’s associate director, about how it all played out.
The FA’s ‘First Time Fans’ campaign focuses on pitch side reactions to The Beautiful Game, proving why the sport endures. Creative Moment explores the secrets to its success.
Creative Moment (CM): What was the brief from The FA, and what were the key discussions that shaped the campaign idea?
Alex Royce (AR): The FA set us the task of coming up with an activation to showcase "the love of the game" and the passionate and emotive connection fans have with football, with the core objective to remind fans from across the football family why football is so great and the positive feelings it can evoke. The team consequently went away and explored how this ‘passion’ manifests differently for various fan groups, from new fans to core fans, young fans to elderly fans and how this passion and feeling of pure joy could be brought to life in an engaging and, importantly, editorial manner. After an initial tissue session, the team landed on the concept of ‘First Time Fans’, an idea that celebrated the unfiltered joy of football and particularly the unique emotion of experiencing a live match for the first time. The FA ran with the idea and decided to activate it to coincide with Thomas Tuchel’s first game in charge to provide an additional hook. They invited fans to their first England game and captured their authentic reactions throughout.
CM: How was the content filmed, and what were the key filming locations and techniques?
AR: We firstly had to find our case studies who would feature in the campaign and, importantly, who represented a diverse set of fans and provided rich storytelling opportunities for our story. Here, we partnered with the team at Goal Click to source five sets of passionate football fans who had never attended a live England match. Once we had our case studies, The FA onboarded its in-house production team, Little Thief to start to build out the content and how it would be shot. Timed perfectly with Thomas Tuchel’s first match at Wembley, Little Thief were able to capture our fans’ authentic reactions throughout the match, utilizing a multi-camera setup, including stationary long lens cameras trained on each fan group for the entire 90 minutes and GoPro footage, to capture their reactions. Each group was also equipped with microphones for real-time soundbites and post-game vox pops.
CM: Were there any challenges during filming?
AR: The biggest challenge we faced was the tight schedule between Tuchel’s first match in charge on the Friday and the second international fixture on the Monday. This not only limited our window of getting the story out there before our content became old news but also the rapid turnaround Little Thief faced in editing eight hours of footage into a hero two-minute edit within a 48-hour window, as well as getting the sign-off from all relevant stakeholders within that same period. The FA managed that turnaround period closely with Little Thief and briefed in additional clips once they saw the strength of the footage – such as a bespoke video for their Wembley channels and a special goal celebration piece. As you can imagine, the timelines made it a major undertaking for all involved, but everyone was primed and on the same page, so it became a relatively simple process, given the challenge!
CM: What has the reception to the campaign been like?
AR: The campaign has been a real success, both in terms of the results it achieved and importantly how it laddered back so simply to the overall objective of bringing to life ‘the love of the game’. To date, the content has achieved over 9.2 million views, 1.9k shares/saves, and 144k likes across social media. The content was also effectively utilised across The FA's wider channels, including the website, WhatsApp, and CRM. At the same time, we wanted to ensure the story landed further than the existing FA community, so we further amplified the campaign's reach by partnering with GOAL Global from an editorial perspective to share cut-downs of the content with their 8.9 million Instagram and 6.2 million TikTok followers. Overall, the core video resonated strongly, capturing the genuine love of football, which was reflected in the high engagement and positive comments.
CM: How was the working relationship with The FA and other partners?
AR: This was our first project with The FA and a truly fantastic and collaborative experience with all partners. The strong communication and alignment on the campaign’s vision from the start ensured that high-quality work was produced. Goal Click's extensive case study sourcing and Little Thief Studio's exceptional expertise in storyboarding, capturing, and editing the footage were crucial to the project's success. Finally, a big shout out to Nick Smith and his team at The FA for trusting us to deliver our first project for them, with another activation just around the corner.
If you enjoyed this article, you can subscribe for free to our weekly email alert and receive a regular curation of the best creative campaigns by creatives themselves.
Published on: