Gaisflowers

Brief:
IFK Goteborg and GAIS, both from Goteborg, are two main football clubs in the Swedish Premier League. IFK Goteborg is the better of the two and has not lost a match against GAIS since 1992. That’s 16 years ago. On 1 September, it was once again time for the derby between the teams. But there’s a problem when one team wins too often; the suspense disappears. And so do spectators. So what could we do in order to raise interest and sell more tickets the week before the big match?
Implementation:
In order to sell more tickets we had to do something about the fundamental problem. Instead of just selling tickets we had to sell the whole idea with a derby. We had to get the thrill back in the game. That´s why we decided to secure the opposition in the future. IFK Goteborg started a campaign where the money collected went to the GAIS youth team. We designed a pin, a flower, which was sold for the symbolic price of SEK 16 (Euro 1,5). All campaign units aimed to gather money for the GAIS youth team. We hoped this would give the derby a lot of publicity and help to sell more tickets.
Results:
The week before the campaign started, we sold approximately 300 tickets a day. During the campaign we sold a total of 8,000 tickets, i.e. 2,000 tickets per day (266% over budget). With a very limited media budget, the campaign spread locally, nationally and became the talk of the town. More than 100 newspaper articles and television reports were made. More than 60 blogs commented on the campaign and over 1,000 comments written and 113 other websites referring to the campaign site. A campaign site was created and had over 13,000 visitors from 38 different countries. The collected funds went to the GAIS youth team; they bought 400 new footballs with the money.
Why the method of promotion was most relevant to the service:
Promotion helps us sell tickets right away. This year we really had to succeed. The thrill of the derby was gone and so were the spectators. But we couldn´t just do a normal Sales Pomotion campaign. We had to sell the whole idea with a derby. We had to get the thrill back in the game.
Welcom Ab
Sport O Evenemang
Christian Norling