The Beautiful Game – A Football Ballet Scores for The New Football Pools
Consumer PR specialist, Resonate has lifted the MediaGuardians MEGAs award for innovation in PR. At a glittering ceremony in Sketch, London, the award presented by Lauren Laverne recognised the companies headline grabbing campaign for The New Football Pools.
Tasked with creating a campaign to take the Football Pools out of the sports pages and into the front half of the newspaper Resonate created The Beautiful Game, an awe-inspiring fusion of football and ballet choreographed and performed by professional ballerinas from English National Ballet.
The Beautiful Game re-created 10 iconic moments of football history as voted for by more than 20,000 football fans via the football pools website. The interpretation included iconic football moments from the past 85 years - marking TNFP’s 85th Anniversary a driving force behind the UK footballing community and a showcase of its contribution to the arts.
Maradona’s Hand of God, Gordon Banks’ amazing 1970 World Cup save and Beckham’s heart stopping free kick against Greece were all enacted in this innovative piece of performance art. Supported by England legends John Barnes and Gordon Banks the ballet touched a nerve with the media and two divergent audiences, football fans and patrons of the arts.
The resulting performance was staged at two theatres that had benefited from funding by the pools, a press preview at the Unicorn Theatre in London and a public premiere at the Everyman in Liverpool – the original home of The Pools and appropriately 2008’s European Capital of Culture.
These two successful events were attended by more than 600 people and the footage of the ballet proved to be a huge online and broadcast hit
http://community.footballpools.com/events/ballet/video/
Graham Drew, Resonate Director, said,: ’Ballet and football are not easy bedfellows and it is precisely this conflict which was the power behind the idea – love it or hate it, it’s provocative. In this time when innovation has never been so necessary we are exceptionally proud to capture a MEGA from the MediaGuardian”.
To date the ballet has generated 84 pieces of coverage with a PR value of £1.1 million In the majority of the pieces the 85 year anniversary of the Football Pools and the message that £1.1billion has been given to good causes was communicated.
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Notes to Editors
For further information please contact Gavin Lewis on 07747 461 680 or gavin@resonate.uk.com .
Campaign Highlights
Print Highlights include
A spread in The Guardian
2 half page features in The Independent
Page 3 of the Daily Telegraph
2 Big pieces in The Times
A feature in Metro
Features in the Liverpool Echo (the home town of the New Football Pools)
Broadcast Highlights included
BBC Breakfast News
BBC North West Tonight
Football Focus on BBC
Sky Sports News,
ESPN
TV in Spain, Asia, Australia and Germany
Sky News Radio, BBC 5 Live, Talk Sport, XFM London
Online highlights included
The Sun Online
Telegraph online http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/09/11/btballet111.xml
The Times Online
ITN online
MSN, Reuters,
Sky Sports News Online
Nuts Online and many,
Football fansites including Teamtalk and 4 the Game
Behind the scenes footage http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BP00pwVC5XU&feature=channel_page
