”Midnight Communications has taken the regional communication of Sky Sports Living for Sport to another level over the past few years and their drive, commitment and flexibility as an organisation make them a real pleasure to work with.
Jack EatherleyFormer Schools Manager, Sky Sports
The challenge
How Midnight managed a multi-award-winning, five-year PR campaign for Sky Sports Living for Sport
Sky Sports Living for Sport was a free schools initiative designed to inspire young people to tap into the power of sport to help them foster valuable life skills, such as self-esteem, teamwork and leadership.
Delivered in partnership with national charity Youth Sport Trust, Sky Sports Living for Sport (SSLFS) saw more than 50,000 young people across a third of UK secondary schools taking part every year, inspired by 100+ Athlete Mentors who shared their stories triumph over adversity. In a relationship that spanned five years and led to a series of sister campaigns, this was one of our favourite multi-faceted high impact campaigns and one we’re particularly proud to have supported.
How Midnight met the challenge
Our campaign had some ambitious objectives, including encouraging 1,500+ secondary schools to sign up each and every year, with an aim to inspire a generation of young people to harness the power of sport.
100 Athlete Mentors were the beating heart of the initiative. And while they were talented sports people, few were household names at the time. These athletes had been handpicked for their inspirational background, having overcome adversity to achieve sporting success. We knew that sports personalities could be a draw for the media, but the story had to go much deeper to demonstrate the tangible benefits of sports to potential participants, parents and stakeholders.
Exceeding expectations and setting a standard for schools campaigns
If ever there were a campaign that required a brilliantly executed PR drumbeat underpinned by compelling pillar campaigns, this was it. The thousands of Athlete Mentor school visits had to be a core focus to engage our primary audience – teachers – and we made it our mission to forge relationships with each of the ambassadors to help generate authentic, impactful content. Interactive PR and social media workshops provided them with the tools and confidence to help us make the most of a limited budget, while a proactive press office machine publicised visits round the clock.
We were entrusted with the social media for the whole campaign, including launching channels entirely from scratch and building a presence where none existed before.
But it was the opportunity to bring into the narrative those pupils participating in the initiative as case studies which we could elevate to drive human interest and tell more meaningful stories rooted in the schools and local communities. Giving oxygen to these stories drove the development of what became a critical element in the whole campaign – the awards.
PR agencies deliver campaigns. PR partners deliver strategic engagement and thinking that help take the client brand to another level. During this campaign, our development of the SSLFS Student and Teacher of the Year Awards offered the client a whole new way to engage the media and win coverage while winning hearts and minds. Our team conceived, managed and promoted the awards, winning vital incremental media coverage and awareness and culminating a televised Awards ceremony, with trophies presented by David Beckham and Jessica Ennis-Hill and broadcast live on Sky 1 and Sky Sports.
‘Get Inspired with Jessica Ennis-Hill’ saw 300 pupils enjoy a once-in-a lifetime experience being coached by Olympians, Paralympians and world champions after being picked from thousands of entries in a nationwide SSLFS competition. A four-week campaign was developed to drive competition entries at a regional level, maximise media interest in the event across the country and create buzz on social channels. A series of press releases maintained media momentum, while a social calendar, culminating in live tweets, drove online interactions.
It’s sometimes an exaggeration when someone suggests there were zero downsides to a campaign – but in this case, it was true. The activity delivered 100% positive sentiment through the campaign and around 700 to 1,000 items of coverage a year.
The campaign succeeded in growing the campaign’s social media channels with more than 20,000 fans and followers across Facebook and twitter (from zero in the case of Twitter), resulting in more than 12,000 website click-throughs to the Sky Sports Living for Sport website – a doubling of its traffic during the period. This translated into the tangible result of hitting our target of signing up 1,500 schools 10 weeks ahead of schedule.
A winning partnership delivering tangible impact beyond the campaign
Midnight’s work across the whole Sky Sports Living for Sport campaign demonstrated what we’re capable of achieving when we work together in partnership over an extended period. The level of trust and collaboration between ourselves, 100 Athlete Mentors as well as the twin stakeholders YST and Sky, enabled us to do the job we were commissioned – and to consistently meet and exceed targets every year.
We lived and breathed this campaign for five years. Hats off to our team who worked tirelessly on this and won no fewer than 14 awards during the lifetime of the campaigns, including the CIPR Pride Award for Best Sporting Campaign and Best Use of Social Media, as well as the Gold award for Planning, Measurement and Evaluation.
And it has continued. The five-year campaign after which the initiative was rolled into Sky Academy, Midnight was asked to handle two projects for YST’s Play Unified and, more recently, for Well Schools, focused on wellbeing for pupils and teachers.
