In 2020 BT announced their biggest ever five-year sponsorship with the Home Nations’ Football Associations and activation strategy ‘The 4-3-3 Game Plan’ – with local football clubs and communities at its heart. Our challenge was to create an employee fanbase large enough to fill a Premier League stadium and to recruit 1,000 BT volunteers for the new FA Playmaker programme.
COVID 19 changed our circumstances but not our mission: to connect people through the power of football and turn up when they need us most with an army of BT volunteers to help local clubs and communities through the pandemic and beyond.
We recruited 50 internal influencers as our ‘4-3-3 Squad’ to lead the charge signing-up Playmaker volunteers for local clubs across the country. A 12-week, remotely produced FA Playmaker recruitment campaign targeted 57,000 UK employees, kicking off with a live virtual event watched by 12,000 employees (and a few famous football faces). The 4-3-3 Squad were trained as content creators, presenters and passionate activists, moving through their teams, signing-up Playmakers while flooding the BT digital channels with their filmed content.
The final score? Targets were smashed. With 1,000 sign-ups in the back of the net we’ve kick-started a genuine legacy. 1,000 active volunteers driving BT’s long-term ambition of connecting communities through the power of football – to each other, to the digital and life skills they need to flourish. It’s a fantastic example of BT’s people, network and technology coming together to remove barriers and empower people to go Beyond Limits.
