Celebrating England’s Grassroots Heroes
England football
The FA tasked us with creating a social-first piece of content to celebrate the start of the grassroots football season in a way that resonated emotionally and would engage audiences beyond England Football’s owned channels.
We began by identifying the unifying human insight - for millions involved in grassroots football, the weekend represents more than just a game.
Then came our narrative and four characters who represented the everyday experiences of grassroots participants. Their stories were created to showcase the community’s joy, dedication, and dreams. This narrative was developed to ensure the content was both relatable and shareable, allowing our audience to connect with the characters seen on their screens.
To drive engagement and re-watchability in a ‘did I just see that?!’ way, we creatively littered the content with current and historic footballing moments and reference points. From Jack Grealish’s low socks and small shin pads, to the Marcelo Bielsa squat, Chloe Kelly’s unique penalty technique, Dan Burns’ iconic celebration and the 4:42 on the microwave - these little bursts of relatability made the content creatively pop throughout the broader narratives.
To amplifyreach, we enlisted Hashtag United content creator PK Humble and Englandinternational Jordan Nobbs, whose ‘Easter Egg’ cameos linked grassrootsaspirations to the professional stage and enabled earned media opportunitiesthat generated high-quality coverage and extended the campaign well beyondowned channels.
The hero film achieved 161k views across social, becoming one of England Football’s top performing posts of the year. Views amongst followers were 146% higher than average and the content received significant engagement levels (4.2%). Whilst this was primarily designed to be a social-first campaign, we also achieved1.02M online earned media views, demonstrating exceptional reach and resonance.
