Most rugby games during the RWC2019 happened while most UK fans were at work. To help fans follow the world cup while being at work we turned to the most used work tools – Googles spreadsheet – and turned that into an interactive entertainment media.

The Canterbury Spreadsheet was a hack of Google live sheet that pulled in real-time rugby data from the RWC2019 and disguised it like 'next year’s budget'. It featured tons of in-game updates like live commentary and real-time stats presented in live, reactionary pie, column and bar charts.

Canterbury rugby sports apparel was the official apparel partner of the Rugby World Cup 2019 in Japan and supplied kits to the volunteers and officials of the tournament, as well as six teams: England, Ireland, USA, Canada, Russia and Georgia. The Canterbury Spreadshhhheets was part of Canterbury’s Be Part Of It campaign, which celebrated how the Rugby World Cup 2019 brought fans from across the world together.

UK is Canterbury’s largest market, and for the UK fans the main issue with the Rugby World Cup taking place in Japan was the fact that most games happened during working hours due to the 8-hour time difference. It put the fans, 25-35 year olds, in a moral dilemma; risk getting caught at work watching the games or not watching the games at all. For rugby fans option number two wasn’t an option.

Due to the 8-hour time difference most games during the Rugby World Cup 2019 in Japan happened while most UK fans were at work. Since Googles spreadsheet is one of the most used work tools amongst the demographic, we turned that – as a world’s first - into a fun interactive entertainment media enabling fans to follow RWC2019 the matches in real-time.

The Canterbury Spreadsheet is a hack of Google live sheet that pulled in real-time rugby data from the RWC2019 and disguised it like 'next year’s budget'. It featured tons of in-game updates like live commentary and real-time stats presented in live, reactionary pie, column and bar charts. It also gave fans a complete overview of the RWC2019 results, standings, match calendar etc.

Besides an entirely fake budget the spreadsheet featured real-time data feed from two already existing sport platforms that delivered API's providing all sorts of data during the entire Rugby World Cup. From both API's the most exiting data for fans was used, such as; match details, score, time, and commentary - displayed in sexy columns as plain text.

These real-time game stats were presented in live, reactionary pie, column and bar charts:

- Ball kicked (represents who's got the upper hand)

- Line outs won

- Scrums won

- Turnovers

- Tries, penalties and conversion

- Cards

It also gave fans a complete overview of how the RWC2019 evolved as the tournament progressed with the standings in each pool, calendar of upcoming fixtures (for fans to plan when to fool the boss again) – and the rankings of each team.

Everything reacting in real time and all autonomous.

We used the real-time data from the RWC2019 (provided by external sport API's) to create a complete fake spreadsheet looking like 'next years budget', which allowed fans to follow the match at work on desktop and on mobile - without getting caught by the boss.

The Canterbury Spreadshhhheet was launched with a humorous film (+cut downs and GIF's) to Canterbury fans through social media and to the fans of Canterbury's 10 rugby influencers (actual players). It's real-time, world first, content and the unsexy, non design, yet clever, appearance appealed to the 25-35 year old laddy target group.

The Google spreadsheet has a limitation in live users. That's why we created a code in the back-end for the campaign link (the entry point for fans) which auto distributed fans to a new sheet when a sheet was entered by more than 20 fans at once (only 20 people for better performance).

The Canterbury Spreadshhhheets was due to its nature secretly shared between thousands and thousands of fans across the UK.

Yet, The Canterbury Spreadshhhheets still had a staggering average viewing time of 31 minutes per user in the Spreadsheet.

Measurable SoMe impressions were more than 6 million.

Sales during the campaign period were up by 13,6% and survey results shows that the brand liking amongst the target group increased by 8,4% on the back of the campaign.