First of all please introduce the agency, tell us about your background and history.
One:Nil was founded by 4 friends – Bart, Gershom, Mathijs and Patrick – who all share the same passion for marketing & sports. With more than 10 years of experience in this industry, in 2019 we finally felt the confidence to fulfill our long-lasting dream and start our own agency. We believe sports is the most thrilling thing on earth and we create winning ideas to ignite the most distinctive campaigns in sports. Like no other we know how to find the sweet spots between brands and sports culture, which makes us specialists in our game. Our goal is to create talk-worthy and head-turning campaigns with outstanding results. Or as we like to say: Rockets for brands that dare to stand out.
Where did the name One:Nil come from?
One:Nil [1-0] stands for the winning mindset of our agency. We create winning ideas and talk-worthy campaigns for A-brands and we have the big ambition to become the best creative agency in sports in Europe.
Although the Netherlands is usually not considered among the 5 biggest sports markets in Europe, its sportsmarketing scene is very vibrant. You have big clubs, top athletes and global brands – a perfect combination. Is there a fierce competition among sportsmarketing agencies on the market?
I think it depends on which perspective you look at this. From a sporting point of view, the Netherlands is one of the leading sports markets in Europe.
We became 7th on the medal table of Tokyo 2020, we are 6th on the medal table of Beijing 2022. And in Europe’s biggest sports we have in the person of Max Verstappen the world champion F1, we have the world’s best cycling team with Team Jumbo-Visma, and with AFC Ajax we have a football club that is competitive in the Champions League, despite the big financial differences with the European elite clubs. And the Royal Dutch Football Association [KNVB] is internationally recognized as one of the most progressive football associations.
This is also why our sports market is commercially interesting, with the result that our sports marketing scene is very vibrant as well. In general, we significantly differ from sports marketing agencies. Where sports marketing agencies offer a broad range of services [selling and managing sponsorships, athlete management, social media, online marketing, etc.] we have hyperfocus on developing campaigns in sports, which makes us the specialist in our game.
Not being a genuine sportsmarketing agency comes with a big advantage: you are not biased by the – sometimes outdated – traditions of the sports industry. What kind of cross-industry practices can you implement in your creative work?
We believe the sports industry can be really innovative and progressive, but most importantly it can be very impactful. Together with music and art, we believe it’s one of the most impactful platforms out there. So that’s what we try to implement in our creative work, to use the power of sports to make an impact by really understanding its culture. Whether it’s a club, a team, an athlete or a sport in general. You need to really understand it to make use of it in the right way.
Your campaign with Ajax melting the Dutch title trophy into tiny stars for fans was noticed globally and won awards. How does such an idea pop into your mind?
Ajax has been one of our first clients, so we already have a long relationship with them. In my opinion, this is one of the most important aspects when it comes to great ideas, which is often forgotten. Through the last couple of years, we had successful campaigns together such as ‘Multa sort Frenkie’, where we wished Frenkie de Jong good luck when he was transferred to FC Barcelona and the campaign around Donny van de Beek when he moved to Manchester United. Through all this experience, we knew what worked and why a campaign was successful [or not]. We also managed to gain the trust of Ajax to work closely together. So when the brief came to think of an end-of-season campaign in a season without fans, all the hard work and experience of the years before came together.
Was it difficult to convince the Ajax representatives to melt down the title trophy?
Ajax probably has the best marketing department of a football club worldwide. As soon as the idea was mentioned during a joint brainstorm, they immediately said ‘we must do this, no matter what!!’. This not only shows their sense of good marketing but also the guts they have as a club because there were a million reasons not to do it of course.
Can you share some numbers about the campaign with us?
The campaign has set a new standard both nationally and internationally and has been named by fans and sports marketers alike as the ‘best campaign in sports history’. Ajax made the news in 150 countries with a total of over 1,600 publications.
An earned reach of no less than 3.7 billion was achieved [3,600% above target] in print and online publications, and over 900 million impressions via social media. The total number of views on the video content reached 12.1 million [1,100% above target].
This not only generates an earned media value of 12 million euros [500% above target], but also creates 37,500 pleasantly surprised season ticket holders, 24 proud partners, 12,00 happy business members and 450 glowing employees.
The stars quickly become popular. Within hours of the launch, there is a rush to buy the championship stars on Marktplaats, eBay and Catawiki with bids of up to a thousand euros.
Football fans around the globe are embracing the idea: as much as 99% of the reactions are positive [target: 90%]. The campaign not only struck the right chord with Ajax’s season ticket holders, but thanks to its gigantic reach, it also ignited love and appreciation internationally for Ajax.
This results in an average growth of 1,126% [target: 50%] in new followers on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube compared to an average period. With almost 10 million views on Twitter, the hero video tweet even becomes Ajax’s highest-scoring tweet ever.
One of your other campaigns, “We The Wave” reached Hungary. During the EURO 2020 you set up an impressive light show in Budapest to support the Dutch team before their game in the round of 16. Given that there is no guarantee for any team progressing from the group stages, you must have worked with a very short deadline or done paralel preparations in 2-3 cities. What were the biggest challenges to pull this campaign through?
That’s a great analysis because we indeed needed to work with several scenarios in 2-3 cities and the project had a lot of challenges. The biggest challenge was the local implementation; especially finding the right locations and the required permits to film and organize the light show, just in a few days. Luckily, we found a local producer who had a lot of experience and also the local government was helpful because they loved the idea. So 2 days before the match we had a timeslot of 6 hours to organize and film a light show in 5 different locations. It was extremely stressful, but we managed to make a success of it and get the video finished the next day.
Orange waves washed over some of the iconic public places of the city. Budapest is a sports capital but was it difficult to get permissions from the local authorities?
All credits to our local producer Gergely Varga who managed all the permissions, which was amazing given the short time frame and the number of permissions we needed. He showed us all the permits and it was like a book of 10cm full of papers. The difficulty was not only receiving the permits, but also making sure that these iconic places were as dark as possible to have the best effects. All lights needed to be turned off within specific time slots, from street lights to the lights on the churches.
What are the main results of this campaign?
98 million reach and publications in 23 countries.
You are very strong in videos. Why do you consider film production a key service in sportsmarketing?
Our main focus is developing campaigns, but we indeed use video a lot as part of our campaign strategy. The reason why is that film is a great way to tell a story, especially in sports where we need to tap into the emotions of the fans. We always try to find the sweet spots between brands and sports culture and video is a great way to show this.
Blockchains, fan tokens and NFTs are probably the hottest topics in sportsmarketing right now. How do you see their future in the industry?
To be honest, we are no experts on this topic. We look at it from a creative point of view and we haven’t seen a lot of good campaigns in sports so far besides the strong presence in sports sponsorships at the moment. We did love the Superbowl ad of Coinbase, which went totally viral. It’s simple, but it’s like how Johan Cruyff said: ‘Football is simple, but playing simple football is the most difficult’.
The Coinbase ad is indeed a great one! So you are saying that sports could provide a brand with a creative platform even if the brand is not present in sports as a sponsor?
That is and always was the case, so our answer is yes. Nevertheless, sports organizations and clubs should always think of how they can be of added value, to make sure they stay interesting for brands. Everyone can make a general ad with football, but by using club assets or the direct association with players it will always be more impactful for the people that have a connection with that club or player.
Should brands approach sport clubs/organizations/events more boldly with creative ideas? Sport clubs/organizations/events sometimes are very traditional – how would you encourage them to embrace these ideas?
It’s not about just being bold in our opinion. First of all, it’s important to really understand the culture of the club, organization or the event and to decide what objectives you want to reach with a potential partnership. Through that, we search for the sweet spot between the brand, the club/organization/event and the fan culture. These insights result in impactful communication and campaigns that can be bold of course, but sometimes a more easy idea can be way more effective.
What trends do you recommend to keep an eye on in sportsmarketing?
We gladly leave the opinion about sports marketing trends to sports marketing agencies. The COVID crisis has shown that the need for creativity is greater than ever. Creativity offers solutions to brand challenges and that is where we add value.