For 38 years NatWest has actively supported and promoted Cricket in England and Wales, as a ‘game for all’. Through this support we have helped open up cricket to broader and more diverse audiences. In 2017 NatWest became the lead partner of England Cricket for the first time and launched ‘Cricket Has No Boundaries’, a campaign that showcases and celebrates the diversity and inclusion of modern cricket in England and Wales.

For the action-packed cricketing summer of 2019, we created a campaign that showed how easy it is enjoy cricket whenever, wherever and however you like. Playing with a frying pan, in the rain. Or an informal game in a car park. Supporting your team dressed as a Smurf. Or a Teletubby. Competing against yourself, or against a machine, or indeed anyone from history. 

There’s no hard and fast rules. No restrictions. No do’s and no don’ts. No boundaries. 

For cricket fans, it showed that NatWest, like them, understands cricket is so much more than its stuffy image. And for non-cricket fans, it cast the game in a whole new light. With this as the campaign’s guiding philosophy, we produced a suite of activations and content that met the objectives of actually getting people playing, following and experiencing the game. 

Among these activations, we created a machine capable of exactly replicating the delivery of any ball bowled in cricketing history, alongside tech company Bola. In a nod to the 38 years that NatWest has supported cricket, we then created a Twitter poll asking the public to vote for which legendary over from the last four decades Freddie Flintoff should attempt to face. 

The resulting film content culminated in Freddie hitting himself for six runs. 

Due to the success of the social film, Freddie VS Freddie then had the opportunity to air on TV. We had 24 hours to produce a cut down version that would feature during the break of the Cricket World Cup final.

This was a really exciting media space, which promised hyper-engaged viewers at a time when cricket would truly be at the front of their minds. This then resulted in fans who had viewed the film seeking out the content on social to re-share on. 

There were 1.8 million unique viewers reached with our Freddie v Freddie content, with minimal media spend and a live period of just a few days. We received a strong engagement rate of 0.46%, with 10,161 clicks through to the full-length version of the film. There was also a strong ad recall rate of 6.95%, versus a benchmark of 5%.