Santander believes in possibility; that we can improve things for ourselves and for those around us. And during the height of the pandemic, we worked with brand ambassadors F2 Freestylers to help parents and carers who were having a tough time adapting to home schooling.
Santander pivoted quickly to create an online learning hub to relieve some of this pressure. We already had some of the building blocks in place; legitimacy in football via a partnership with UEFA Champions League and a platform called The Numbers Game, that uses football to build confidence in numeracy. What was missing was an educational partner with direct access to parents and teachers and the expertise to make learning maths fun – step forward Twinkl.
From here, we worked with F2 and Twinkl to create a series of daily football videos that would direct parents and children to learning modules and F2 also delivered two YouTube Live Skills School shows and TikTok and Instagram posts that integrated our messaging.
We were delighted with the response; over 75,000 individual resource downloads to date and half of these came from teachers who will have shared with thousands of pupils. (smashing benchmarks against equivalent partner-led activity). With help from the F2, we drove significant cut-through in earned media and achieved over two million views of our content. Most importantly, this campaign delivered on possibility; 37% of respondents in Santander’s COVID Barometer study agree that this activity ‘shows a bank that understands there is more to life than money’.
During lockdown it was one thing getting families to do PE with Joe Wicks but engaging with maths was quite another challenge.


