BT is perceived as a faceless, traditional British brand, which to some local communities can appear to be out

of touch. A lot of this perception is a holdover from the days of BT being a nationalised business. This feeling is especially true in Wales where local and Welsh brands are often preferred over big UK brands.

The strength of the BT brand in England stems from its heritage as a British brand, whilst in Wales this isn’t the case, where people favour a local touch. As a result BT has struggled to cut through with direct communications in Cardiff, the Welsh capital.

BT needed to find a way to drive engagement with its direct communications to ensure it doesn’t lose market share in Cardiff to competitors.

In order to appeal to the people of Cardiff, we needed to genuinely engage with their passions. Cardiff City football club had just been promoted to the Premier League and hope was at its highest for the coming season.

We transformed our approach to direct comms by creating the ‘Premier Delivery Service’, and literally kicked our communication into the back gardens of football fans, printed on specially branded BT footballs, each featuring an 18-month free subscription offer.

Using a local hero and international football star we took direct thinking to the extreme and had Cardiff City favourite, Junior Hoilett, ‘deliver’ our footballs by kicking them down Cardiff streets, over walls and into the gardens of fans and potential customers.

The whole scene was captured in a campaign film, which was shared online and across social media and now our branded footballs live on like no other piece of direct mail.

We tapped into the local passion for football at a time when the fans were the most engaged in order to encourage Cardiff City fans to take BT into their hearts. When the football season kicks off, hopes are highest – and nowhere more so than in the cities of the newly promoted teams.

We worked with Cardiff City stadium announcer Ali Yassine, a cult hero amongst fans, to handpick the gardens of the most influential fans. We then geo-targeted residential areas with the highest density of Cardiff City football fans that were also close to the Cardiff City stadium, to ensure critical fans were engaged with and that word travelled quickly across the city.

We were determined to do something completely different; something disruptive that would get their attention.

The garden drop consisted of a BT Sport branded football featuring the 18-month free BT Sport offer, key pricing details and CTA to call BT and take the offer. We also geo-targeted postcodes with a high density of Cardiff City fans with details of the offer to ensure a solid commercial uplift alongside the physical football activation.

The ‘Premier Delivery Service’ campaign landed on the 6 August 2018 and ran in line with the flash sale until the 16 August. Essentially, it was a 10-day window of intense activity centred around a very specific geographic area.

The campaign was amplified across a range of digital and social channels, including being featured on the BT home page, Cardiff City’s website and social pages, as well as being picked up by loads of local newspapers and bloggers.

Cardiff City fans loved the campaign so much they shared reactions across all social media channels generating a huge amount of localised conversation, over 251K social media views, plus hundreds of comments, shares and RTs.

Positive mentions of BT in the Cardiff area were 67% positive, showing that Cardiff took BT into their hearts as a result of seeing the campaign. The national average is usually just 21%. We managed to reach 93% of the population of Cardiff, so that’s a lot of positive people.

Commercially it was a great success, with a 78% uplift in response rate vs. non-targeted standard door drop and a 69% uplift in conversion rate vs. non-targeted standard door drop.