Sporting Eric scoop three international marketing awards for recycled rugby ball campaign
A Ball for the Planet, the global campaign focused on Rhino Rugby’s recycled rugby ball range has won three awards at the International Content Marketing Awards in London’s Barbican.
The campaign, launched in April 2024, picked up Gold for Best Specialist Campaign, and Silver in both Best Global Campaign and Best Purpose-Led Campaign, beating huge competiton from around the marketing world.
Shot in India, where the majority of rugby balls are made, A Ball for the Planet covered not only the process but the impact of rubber on the environment, highlighting the unique Rhino recycled collection along the way. Working with Rhino across the world, A Ball for the Planet was a full-360 campaign and also included the back story of the stars of the video, Khelo Rugby – aka The Jungle Crows, a rugby team centred around helping street kids into education – and a skills challenge that engaged players on social from Rwanda to Estonia, and everywhere in between.
The judges said of the work:
‘This entry highlights how purpose-driven marketing can create real change when it’s authentic. Instead of fabricating false narratives, this entrant boldly owned their story, and they’re proud of it. This truth-telling helped this challenger brand compete with, and even beat, the market leader and now they’ve got the world champions on board!
‘Our judges also liked the video this entrant created. It was not only visually attractive but interesting and felt honest. Our panel mentioned how they were kept glued to the video until the end and I enjoyed the soundtrack and fonts used throughout’
Sporting Eric has been working with Rhino for eight years and the rugby brand’s CEO Reg Clark said of the work: “A Ball for the Planet made a statement not only about sustainability within our sport, but also about Rhino, positioning it as truly global players in the rugby ball market. It was an excellent multi-platform campaign, rich in storytelling, delivered by our always-on agency that we consider to be very much part of the Rhino family.”
Alex Mead, Sporting Eric’s managing director, added: “We’re passionate about rugby, so combining our great sport with a great story that we felt was really important, with a backdrop of India, made complete sense to us, so to win three international awards at the CMAs was a huge bonus, and great for everyone involved.”
The global campaign, was the third major one for Rhino in three years, following Home of the Scrum and We Are Contact and already both Rhino and Sporting Eric have built on the success of A Ball for the Planet with the announcement that the brand is now offical supplier to the back-to-back men’s world champions, the Springboks.
If you’d like to speak to Sporting Eric about this, or helping your brand tell great rugby stories, email Alex at alex@sportingeric.com
