FMBE Awards – Most Effective Sponsorship Activation

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Highly Commended – Bronze, TRO – Saudia

Agency TRO have a tremendous track record in this category and won it in 2020 with consummate ease with a Formula E campaign for BMW that pulled off a lot of tricks to give the brand and its e-racing team an amazing platform online and off, bringing drive through cinema to the heart of Berlin. Here’s what we said last year.

This year’s entry showed similar resilience and a desire to make it work, again using Formula E, but this time on behalf of airline client Saudia.

This time our judges were given insight into an At Home experience after a late COVID pivot away from the event fan experience that was originally proposed.

Fans and customers were given the chance to win one of 1,000 special ‘watch at home’ gift boxes, designed to enhance the race viewing experience, educate fans about Formula E and create a reason to share. Across the cities of Jeddah and Riyadh, selected fans, valued employees, AlFursan loyalty members and even two passenger flights were surprised and delighted with the special packages, which included local snacks, refreshments and Formula E goodies .

The entry evidenced great co-ordination with local agencies to make an experience that delivered huge impressions numbers across social media.

Gold – The Circle Agency with Plaster Creative Communications – Costa Coffee

This team took the on-off jeopardy of events under COVID and ratcheted it up a notch by linking brand event plans with the highly weather influenced celebration of balloon flights. Would it all go up in hot air?

And even the product was a launch, with Bristol being identified by Costa Coffee as having the right blend of demographics to see its new Costa Express machine, the Marlow 1.2 take off.

The partnership was initially going to feature as part of the traditional and much loved Balloon Fiesta; however, when it was announced in June 2021 that the event would be cancelled for a second year running, discussions turned to a new presentation that the Balloon Festival team had been considering: the “Fiesta Fortnight”. This new format would see the balloons lift off from launch sites in and around Bristol that had never previously been attempted. The festival asked their community to nominate sites across the city.

Circle Agency worked with Bristol based, specialist communications agency Plaster and the Fiesta team to create a bespoke sponsorship package that would allow this new format to go ahead at a scale that would both bring joy to Bristolians and balloon lovers everywhere, but also achieve huge brand equity for Costa Coffee in the city.

The goal was to create an impact on the city from an organic and earned media perspective, increasing awareness of Costa’s new ice drink machines, and to ensure an excellent first-hand experience of the machines for visitors to the event.

An intricate plan went into full flow after a couple of rained off flights with celebrations around the city and Costa’s pod base in Bristol’s Queen Square enjoying a very intimate connection with balloonists and Bristolian’s alike.

The entry was finished with a  catalogue of results that accounted for qualitative and quantative measures of success. Judges appreciated the effort that had been made to give both physical numbers and sentiment.

One commented “The 8 balloon launches were embraced as special occasions and the Costa/Agency team have been rewarded for their bravery and commitment with media and social media results that prove that fortune favours this approach. The result was clever, unique and embraced by the city.”