The brief
The AFL Women's competition was launching with almost no cultural footprint. The challenge was not building awareness, it was about building and enabling permission. We needed people to feel that attending, watching and caring about women's football was something they were already the kind of person who would do.
The background
We had been working with the AFL's commercial team since 2016 through BecBrideson's Gender Intelligence consultancy, running workshops and speaking engagements to bring their team up to speed on the economic, political and social movements of women over the previous decade. When the AFLW launch campaign came up, we proposed an all-female creative team, not for optics alone but because authentic female perspective on this particular brief was going to produce better work than any other approach. The marketing team agreed and gave us the lead.
The idea
We built a team of notable female creatives including author and social commentator Jane Caro and agency head Bec Brideson, and developed a concept to reimagine the iconic 1994 AFL ad "I'd Like To See That." The updated version featured female and male sports figures and public voices including Cathy Freeman, Lee Lin Chin, Sabre Norris, Michele Payne, Turia Pitt and Melbourne FC Captain Nathan Jones holding his young daughter.
The line worked because it was an invitation rather than an argument. It gave people who already believed women deserved to play great sport somewhere to put that belief, without trying to convince anyone of anything.
The result
The ad launched on Facebook with zero media spend, reaching 1.5 million people organically and generating 4,000 shares. It was picked up by Channel 9 News without prompting. The opening round drew 50,000 attendees. The first game sold out completely with 24,000 fans filling the ground.
Since the campaign, AFLW attendance has grown 76%. Women now account for 30% of total participation in Australian rules football, contributing to a 10% overall participation increase in 2017. Notably, 70% of AFLW game attendees had never previously attended a men's AFL game, the campaign did not just convert existing fans, it created an entirely new audience.
Why it worked
It did not feel like marketing. It felt like an invitation to something that was already happening. We found the thing a large number of Australians already believed and gave it somewhere to go. The all-female creative team was not a constraint, it was the reason the work had the texture and authenticity it needed to land.
