In Australia – a nation of 21m – media costs are relatively high. There are powerful existing relationships between the Australian Cricket Team’s major sponsors (the nation’s biggest brands), and the broadcasters of the cricket. While there are no legal restrictions to running branded content on mainstream TV, unless you are major sponsor of the Australian Cricket Team, it’s very difficult (and extremely expensive) to secure a media buy offering sufficient exposure. M.J. Bale is the team’s smallest sponsor, the Official Tailors to the team.

The ‘Grazed on Greatness’ documentary was created to build awareness for M.J. Bale’s sponsorship of the Australian Cricket Team. As the Teams smallest sponsor, there was very little awareness. Note, the tier of sponsorship only allowed 1 featured current player.So we did something for the Australian Cricket Team that had never done before. First, we found the oval where the Australian Cricket Team had its most victories, the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG). We then took some hallowed turf from there and replanted it on our Merino sheep farm in Armidale NSW. We fed this grass to our sheep, literally grazing them on Australia’s greatest victories. Then we sheared them and with their wool, now infused with victory, we hand-crafted suits for the Australian Cricket Team.Over 11 months, we documented this process creating a 3-minute film starring cricket superstar Shane Watson, and other Australian cricketing icons.

Australia’s sports stars helped spread the content, which was loved by the sport obsessed Australian media. We leveraged the branded content to gain national and international attention, outshining the cricket team’s biggest, (and biggest spending) sponsors.Journalists and bloggers were sent ties made from the first ever batch of the wool. That linked them to an online press kit with all the assets (including the film) needed to spread the content for us.

The content ran online, in cinema, M.J. Bale’s website. Earned PR saw it appear in in the mainstream broadcast news and it was further spread by traditional media, editorial, and in-store activity.

In Australia, cricket is a sport of enormous popularity. The nation’s passion for the team provided the opportunity for our content to reach a mass audience via earned media.We created a 3-minute documentary film, ‘Grazed on Greatness’ starring current Australian cricket superstar Shane Watson. We launched this midway through an International Cricket Test Match, with the eyes of the nation already on the team. Simultaneously we armed journalists, media and opinion leaders with a broadcast quality copy of the film. Earning a prime time national news story of almost two minutes featuring the content, on the day of launch.

-The documentary content helped the campaign earn 8.5m earned media impressions worth over A$3.2m-Prime time national news story, featuring almost 2 minutes of the content, syndicated to every state in Australia-Further earned coverage in national press, editorial, PR and social media-Unprompted, the Cricket Australia website, with over half a million visitors daily, promoted the campaign by putting the documentary film in full on their website-Web traffic up 635% compared with pre content period-Users spent 3 times more time on the site compared with pre content-In-store traffic and sales spiked to an all-time high-520% Increase in tailored suit orders-The Australian Government recognised M.J Bale’s efforts in the film, and via the Australian Wool Board, is now funding them to further wool innovation