Australia is a huge sporting nation with a tiny population. While football is the most diverse, most played grassroots code in the country, it was the least watched at professional level.

Badged as irrelevant, uninspiring and unrelatable in the eyes of youth, the little support football had was dwindling as a generation who hold a distrust of traditional advertising, and engage less with traditional media channels, tuned out.

Knowing we would fail by following the well trodden formula of our sporting competitors, we developed a strategy grounded in football’s unique and inseparable connection to youth culture.

Advertising alone was not going to resonate with this audience. Instead we built a new league from the ground up, entwining football and youth culture to secure the next generation of fans.

In an Australian first, we united both the men and women’s comps under one gender-neutral banner - the A-Leagues. No longer would the men’s competition be known as A-League and women’s as W-League. By unifying, we signified the equal weight accorded to each competition, celebrating all and bringing a contemporary dimension to the game.

Next, we launched a new identity. We designed a brand, logo and custom typeface that’s drawn from the game, with the crossbar-inspired ‘\’ acting as a symbol of collaboration with fans, players and partners.

A brand platform “Here Come the Future” was born - a rallying cry to the next generation to play their own way - on and off the pitch. A music track and video ‘Real Nice (H.C.T.F.)’ launched the inaugural A-Leagues season and platform.

Spearheaded by a one-of-a-kind music collaboration between three of Australia’s hottest young artists - DJ/Producer Young Franco, Aria Award R&B winner Tkay Maidza and Rapper Nerve, the ask of them was simple: Creative self expression through football.

Serving as a culture piece rather than another sporting ad, ‘Real Nice (H.C.T.F)’ is a celebration of the A-League's positioning at the intersection of football and culture. It weaves lyric references to paint a vision for a more diverse, creative and expressive chapter of the game, and has enough universal appeal to connect with a new, younger audience, whether they play football or not.

The track was seeded through touchpoints most relevant to Australia’s young tastemakers to help redefine the A-Leagues' identity as one that truly reflects the next generation.

Lauded by trade publications such as NME and Music Feeds as a “slapper of an anthem” and “the soundtrack to a new era of Aus football”, ‘Real Nice (H.C.T.F.) went straight to the top of the Triple J Most Played chart, staying in the top ten for six weeks. It received over a thousand plays across 17 stations.

Over on TikTok, the track and video hit 26.6m impressions across 2 hashtags with 1,810 Gen Defy-ers using ‘Real Nice (H.C.T.F.)’ to create their own content, making it a top ten trending sound.

A truly consumer-centric approach connected through creative, content and media, the success of the track was able to reverse declining search interest in A-Leagues, returning it to 2019 levels at the start of the season and increased A-Leagues’ overall share of search versus tier one competitor sports by 3%.

The campaign delivered a value exchange for the next generation that gave them an outlet to express their love of football rather than just another ad to be ignored.

The A-Leagues had begun to find its place in Australian culture; future seasons of the sport would build from there.

A-Leagues - Here Come the Future

CREDITS

Ben Newman

Justin Phang

Henry Cook

Lauren Butterfield

Scott McKinnon

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