DIGITAL PR

RugbyPass - Rugby World Cup 2023

RugbyPass wanted to make the 2023 Rugby World Cup the most widely accessible rugby event ever and promote its RugbyPass TV service. They turned to us to help make this happen via a digital PR campaign.

Services

DIGITAL PR

The Campaign: Ideation Process

During the ideation process, we quickly realised that we needed to create a concept that was on-brand and would give us a voice in a crowded sports news space. In addition, we also knew that the idea also needed to be engaging, have search potential and generate coverage and links across the tournament.

Based on our keyword research and competitor analysis, we realised that interactive content would perform best. As a result, we recommended ‘team picker’ and ‘player picker’ tools based around search terms - e.g. ‘who will win the Rugby World Cup?’ and ‘what’s the greatest Rugby World Cup XV’ – to ask RugbyPass’ fans and some chosen rugby experts/legends to use them and share their picks.

This approach allowed us to create unique, shareable and EEAT-led content assets. Additionally, it also allowed us to leverage this content and data to create eye-catching rugby news stories - that we could outreach.

Additionally, we also recognised the need to produce a Rugby World Cup content hub on the RugbyPass site to capture search interest, provide a place to house our campaign and help drive sign-ups - requiring keyword research, URL structuring and page mapping, including RugbyPass’ data feeds and including relevant internal links and sign-up CTAs.

Finally, we also suggested ‘reactive digital PR’ to help promote RPTV via its flagship programme, ‘The Big Jim Show’.

The Campaign: Execution

Following approval of our campaign assets, we had three months to deliver the campaign.

We started with a keyword research and URL structuring project, which mapped out which Rugby World Cup-related content would be needed. As part of this, we created a Rugby World Cup hub that acted as a ‘Wiki’ for fans and provided them with key pieces of information.

Additionally, technical SEO direction was supplied. As part of this, we provided suggestions and fixes to issues impacting crawlability and rankings at a site-wide level. Fixes included content cannibalisation issues, metadata optimisation and hreflang.

01

On top of this, we also curated the required players, teams and data and briefed the dev team at RugbyPass to build and test the picker tools. Following this, we created the on-site promotional assets, including banners, graphics and native ads.

02

Then, using RugbyPass’ talent network, we contacted and arranged interviews with 10 relevant legends/experts of world rugby, asking them to use the pickers, make their selections and answer questions about their choices

03

Once the tournament was underway, we also encouraged RugbyPass’ fans to make their picks. This was then turned into two main content feature articles, complete with graphics.

04

Next, we looked at what stories we could get from this content and created a number of press releases, promoting our findings – pushing them out to get coverage.

05

For the reactive work, we watched ‘Big Jim’s’ pre-match interviews live, writing up our stories and releases for sign-off and then pushing them out during/after the game. Notable guests included Javier Bardem and Rory McIlroy.

Results

Key results from the campaign included:

80+

links earned

61

average DA

3

pieces of print coverage

10

non-English speaking placements

28

pieces above DA80

1

podcast appearance

200m+

estimated reach

100k+

social engagements

10k+

picker uses

Wider campaign results included:

  • ‘Road to the Final’ - best performing onsite news piece for three months
  • Large volumes of international traffic
  • Our content assets drove over 149,000 engaged sessions
  • Keywords where RugbyPass ranked in the top three positions grew from 149 to 561
  • In the UK alone, the Rugby World Cup subfolder ranks for 1,430 page 1, traffic-driving keywords
  • 150,000 sign-ups for RPTV
  • +600% organic sessions vs Japan Rugby World Cup 2019
  • +32% total sessions vs Japan Rugby World Cup 2019
  • 600+ additional ‘Rugby World Cup’ keywords featured on page one

On top of this, our campaign won Best Use of PR in a Search Campaign at the Global Search Awards in Krakow in 2024.

TESTIMONIAL
Working alongside Another Concept meant that I could focus on doing my job during an incredibly busy time, safe in the knowledge that they’d be getting results and using initiative to work towards our goal. The tournament was a huge success and we saw more visitors come to RugbyPass to follow the tournament than ever before.
Kim Ekin
Head of Editorial & SEO Strategy
World Rugby
TESTIMONIAL

“Working alongside Another Concept meant that I could focus on doing my job during an incredibly busy time, safe in the knowledge that they’d be getting results and using initiative to work towards our goal. The tournament was a huge success and we saw more visitors come to RugbyPass to follow the tournament than ever before.”

Kim Ekin
Head of Editorial & SEO
World Rugby
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