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Charlton Athletic Community Trust

Street Violence Ruins Lives

Objective

Charlton Athletic Community Trust (CACT), the community division of Charlton Athletic FC, uses football as a tool to help drive social change. Eulogy! works on a pro-bono basis with CACT, to raise the profile of the organisation and the work it does within its local community; the core programme for 2009 centred on street violence.

Following relegation (which meant no prominent UK media exposure) Charlton Athletic was scheduled to play close neighbours and arch-rivals Millwall on 19^th December 2009 for the first time in many years.

Given the close proximity of the two clubs, and the reputation of Millwall fans, this match was earmarked by both clubs and the police as a possible tense affair. Eulogy! was asked by CACT to implement a PR campaign that promoted its community work and united supporters at the game.

OBJECTIVES

Raise the profile of CACT and the work it does within the local community, and unite supporters at the game:

• 20 pieces of coverage outside sports pages
• 1 national
• 3 broadcast
• Positively impact street violence in Greenwich for the launch month of December
  • Gun-enabled crime ‘Violence against the person’ crimes

Description

STRATEGY

Charlton Athletic has a close relationship with the Knox family who tragically lost their son Robbie to a street violence incident in 2009, and Millwall has a close relationship with the Mizen family, who also lost their son Jimmy to street violence in the same year. Eulogy!’s strategic approach was to raise awareness of the issue of street violence by helping CACT tell the story of the Knox and Mizen families on the day of the Charlton Athletic and Millwall game. 

 

We would create a hard-hitting campaign to highlight the dangers of street violence on a national and regional level, tying into the work carried out by CACT. By generating interest in a unique and human way, we would offer a more compelling story to the more mundane messaging often seen in the media about street violence.

 

Creativity & originality

To illicit media coverage for a game in the third tier of English football, we would have to deliver a story with emotion that would resonate with football fans and a creative approach that gave the media a story they could tell.

 

We created a hard-hitting campaign creative ‘Street Violence Ruins Lives’.  We wanted to make sure this heart-felt message penetrated every person at the game and ensure it had the most high-profile platform.

 

So, very ambitiously, we asked both club sponsors to remove their logos from the front of the shirts for the match and replace them with a specially designed “Street Violence Ruins Lives” logo. They both agreed and replacing the brand with a social message created a huge talking point.

 
To engage the Knox and Mizen families and to garner media interest we recommended that both football clubs dedicated the match to the two families who had suffered such tragic losses. Our next job was to create a ‘media spectacle’. We invited both families to attend on the day, to go onto the pitch pre-match and take in the applause and respect of the two sets of fans and do this wearing the shirts of their teams with the names of their late sons on the back, emblazoned with the logo ‘Street Violence Ruins Lives’.  By doing this, and telling a story that resonated with every person in the stadium, we managed to unite supporters at a match that the Police were worried could have been violent.

 

METHOD DEPLOYED

We had to ensure that the initiative was fully supported by every stakeholder involved:  the team sponsors, the families, the press officers and board of both football clubs, and the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS). The MPS fully supported the initiative and gave approval for its go-ahead.

Traditionally, press don’t focus on an upcoming football match until the previous week’s fixtures are completed, let alone a match in the third tier of English football. Our solution was two-pronged.

 

National exclusives

• Placed exclusive features with The Sun and Daily Mirror in the week leading up to the game
• Enabled the families to tell their stories of loss and bring to the fore their support and hopes for the ‘Street Violence Ruins Lives’ initiative

 

These features appeared simultaneously on the Thursday before the game following confirmation from Geoff Webster, deputy editor of The Sun that his newspaper was prepared to:

‘Put down newspaper rivalries to ensure that the initiative got the placement it deserved’ 

Carol Watson, features editor, Daily Mirror, confirmed exactly the same.

How we maximised this coverage:

• Also issued a press release announcing the initiative to national/regional/online/broadcast media
• Created an attention grabbing picture story by accompanying the release with vibrant images of the shirts the teams would be wearing for the match, with the ‘Street Violence Ruins Lives’ logo.

 

The day of the game

Eulogy! arranged for the two families to participate in a series of broadcast opportunities

• Sky News interviewed the families for over five minutes live on the 13:30 news as they told of their tragic losses whilst standing pitch side
• BBC London News, London Tonight and BBC Radio 94.9FM also recorded interviews to accompany the match report, something that would usually have only been a news in brief in the sports results round ups
• TalkSport, BBC Radio Five Live and Soccer AM also covered the story by showing the actual shirts of the two clubs
• Eulogy! supplied the shirts exclusively with the unique logo, live on their show to help bring it to the attention of football fans across the UK

Results

For a match in the third-tier of English football

• 39 pieces of coverage (target 20) – 70% outside sport pages
• 2 exclusive double–page-spreads in The Sun and the Daily Mirror (target 1)
• 11 pieces of broadcast (target 3)
  Sky News, BBC London News, London Tonight, BBC Radio 94.9FM, TalkSport, BBC Radio Five Live, Soccer AM
• Positively impact street violence in Greenwich for the launch month of December
  • Our campaign was the only initiative in place during December to which reductions in crime can be attriubted
  • 78% reduction in gun-enabled crime - Dec 2009 vs. Dec 2008
  • 30% reduction in ‘violence against the person’ crimes – Dec 2009 vs. Dec 2008

Other key highlights:

• Sunday Mirror columnist Michael Calvin dedicating his entire piece to the initiative and recommending that the FA follow suit for a nationwide anti-violence campaign in World Cup year
• Evening Standard showcasing the two shirts with the logos to be worn
• Initiative discussed on Guardian Football Weekly podcast reaching an international audience