THE CHALLENGE

The International Champions Cup (ICC) was founded by Relevent Sports, a company building a soccer presence around the globe by showcasing matchups across the United States, China and Singapore. When Nashville’s Nissan Stadium was chosen to host two of the Premier League’s top teams—Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City—Relevent Sports asked GS&F to help get cheeks in seats with a PR and paid media plan.

Not only was this an important opportunity for us as an agency, the success of the event was important to Nashville because the city had recently placed a bid for a Major League Soccer team. Our efforts surrounding the ICC match would assist in supporting that bid. With this in mind, we set one additional goal for ourselves—to break the state record for soccer game attendance.

WHAT WE DID

The ICC match was scheduled to take place just three weeks after a CONCACAF (Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football) Gold Cup match that was also being hosted in Nissan Stadium. With soccer matches of this caliber coming to Nashville few and far between, we needed to find a way to differentiate the ICC match and draw in a larger crowd. Our plan included:

• “Celebrate Soccer in Nashville” event two weeks prior to the game
• “British Takeover” pop-up events with English-themed food on a double-decker bus
• Paid media strategy included integrated video, audio, out-of-home, digital and print components