With three major events coinciding—FIFA Women's World Cup (FWWC), Wrexham's US tour, and the 2023 Leagues Cup—this summer was a soccer fan's dream. And thanks to perfectly timed partnerships with all three events, GEICO had the prime opportunity to leverage this cultural moment and the passion of soccer fans to reach a wider audience.
We approached what became coined ‘the Summer of soccer’ as a formidable challenge, ultimately yielding high reward for the brand. We were tasked with orchestrating a strategy to support three simultaneous but distinct soccer partnerships, each inclusive of influencers and talent. The complexity lay in seamlessly weaving together the narratives of these partnerships while concurrently integrating GEICO's insurance messaging. While these partnerships were carefully selected and contracted against business goals, we were also aware that they would require tact in order to avoid overwhelming our social audiences, who had never encountered soccer content from our channels prior to these activations.
The goal: Develop engaging and cost-effective content that celebrates the global appeal of soccer, resonates with diverse viewerships, and utilizes IP to ensure meaningful engagement with target audiences, all while seamlessly integrating GEICO's core messages to advance brand goals.
To accomplish this, we strategically extended the brand’s ease positioning into an approach to all three tournaments: GEICO helps make being a soccer fan easier. Not only did this provide value to the viewers and attendees of the events, but it gave natural footing to interweave brand messaging. We crafted a support plan inclusive of on-the-ground match content, soccer and insurance memes, tentpole moment coverage, trending social formats, and ongoing community management. Plus, to extend the world of GEICO’s owned content to new audiences, we invested in the soccer community, tapping partners like Carli Lloyd and Humphrey Ker so GEICO was always in fans' feeds in a meaningful way. We portrayed the iconic "GEICO Gecko" as the ultimate soccer enthusiast, actively participating in the season's most significant moments as they unfolded.
Across the 5 weeks, GEICO had 125+ posts and 150+ Community Management engagements across channels—solidifying the Gecko as the ultimate soccer fan and GEICO as the ultimate soccer brand—all while creating unforgettable social content. Content drove above benchmark engagement rates with posts like Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney welcoming the Gecko to Wrexham, the Gecko meeting Tazuni, a Lionel Messi feature, and a FIFA "Fancestry" collab.
Not only did posts skillfully intertwine various partners and activations, creating a cohesive and interconnected narrative, but they surpassed our planned target goals, exceeding expectations and achieving notable success. Social content garnered triple the planned impression at 175.5M. TikTok TopView ads, crafted specifically for the placement, resulted in 29M views - above TikTok’s benchmarks for the placement.
Notably, the Wrexham partnership’s ability to connect with fans drove substantial progress towards achieving business goals. This content resulted in over 2.6k quote completes: when individuals click through to the website and subsequently fill out the full form to receive a cost estimate for a GEICO policy - a considerable level of effort to receive from these consumers.
