After becoming Official Title Partner of Men’s and Women’s Test Cricket in England and Wales and of the Men’s Country Championship LV= set out to reach English cricket fans. By using the 2023 cricket summer – including The Ashes – our aim was drive awareness, authentic cut through and engagement. LV= also wanted to enact support and change.
As well as supporting activation elements, maximizing our assets such as player interviews and managing LV=’s reputation during some key news items across the season we delivered a first for LV= and an ECB partner – the ‘LV= Media Diversity Grant.’
The plan was to increase diversity in the media which reports on cricket. Working in partnership with BCOMS – Black Collective of Media in Sport – and The Cricket Writer’s Club this grant allowed one young person from a diverse background the chance to cover the entirety of the Ashes summer as a full-time cricket journalist.
We arranged a judging panel featuring active cricket journalists to determine Shubi Arun as the outstanding candidate following a writing and interview process. We then used our relationship with the ECB and with various national titles to accredit Shubi for the series and place him with a different outlet at each Test Match – Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, The Cricketer, Daily Mirror and Press Association.
It’s me and lv=
The results
Shubi’s pieces were used in every outlet he worked with which also included references to LV=’s sponsorship.
The relationships built also ensured LV= were given excellent exposure in terms of logo usage in newspapers and positive articles were also written about LV= as a sponsor – all earned by proactive PR.
The success was complete when Shubi was offered a job at ESPN by the end of the summer internship.
The Media Diversity Grant demonstrated a different way of using partnership assets and relationships to enact a genuine change in the sporting ecosystem.
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3.5M ESTIMATED PRINT & ONLINE READERSHIP
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26 PIECES OF PROACTIVELY EARNED MEDIA COVERAGE
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90% OF MEDIA AUDITED HAS A POSITIVE VIEW
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