Shipbourne Cricket Club

Well. Where to Start? This all got a little bit out of hand… in a good way.

My club were desperate to recruit new players for the upcoming season, if we failed, it would mean the end of our 140 year history.

I convinced the club to follow my vision for an advertising campaign which would change our worlds forever. I combined all my creative passions into one campaign:

Emotion - I appealed to the deep seated-human need to be loved, no matter our faults.

Words - I think I have a way with them, and despite what people say, I proved that people can indeed still read.

Experiential/Guerilla Marketing - Real life stunts have so much potential for earned media, and you can also film them yourself to produce content. Win-Win.

Risk - I stood outside stations at 6am, dressed in cricket whites, making an absolute fool of myself, in order to hand out leaflets which aren’t supposed to work anymore.

Agency: Samuel Cork
Year: 2022
Category: Experiential, Print, PR.

The Results?

The stunt went viral on social media after it was tweeted by one of largest cricket YouTube channels ‘Cricket District’ (86.7k subs YouTube)

• They then released an Instagram reel talking of the genius of the campaign, which at the time of writing reached 28,396 accounts. 

• We were tweeted by BT Sports Cricket asking ‘Where do we sign up?’

• Yorkshire Tea contacted us,  offering us free tea for the season. I accepted, but tweeted them with a picture of our shirts with their logo, asking for sponsorship. We’re currently talking about a possible PR stunt next year. 

• Having contacted the BBC, I was invited on the BBC Radio Kent evening show for an interview, they then asked me to appear live on the morning show the next day. I taught them how to bat and bowl live on air/social. (Radio Kent will also be following the journey of one of our new players). 

• Someone uploaded the leaflet to Reddit r/casual/UK. It received a staggering 8.3k upvotes (98%) and 216 comments.

• Twitter-wise it’s been hard to calculate, as so much was shared without the club being tagged. However current numbers are 1,497 likes, 28 quote tweets and 65 Retweets. The BT Sports account alone has 85k followers, and Cricket District 15k. So again, twitter impressions and reach number in over 100k, with a potential reach of over 1 million. 

• We received a 2 minute piece on BBC Southeast in the 6 o’clock news. 

• The stunt cost just over £300 (and my dignity).