Havas Play
Connecting brands to fans through passions and purpose
We connect brands to fans through passions and purpose. By creating meaningful moments people want to spend time with, at the intersection of entertainment, sports, technology, and fandom.
Our services and capabilities are delivered by an in-house team across six divisions – Strategy, Creative, Activation, Content & Media Partnerships, Production and Measurement and Evaluation – enabling us to create and deliver truly 360, integrated campaigns whatever the brief.
Strategy
Identifying where and how brands and rights holders should play at the intersection of entertainment, sports, technology, and fandom.Creative
Big ideas rooted in passions and purpose, that people want to spend time with.Activation
360 activation spanning sponsorship and partnerships, social, PR, talent and influencer, and experiential.Content & Media Partnerships
Content and media partnerships for every channel.Production
In-house end-to-end production studios.Measurement and evaluation
Measuring the impact on your business and brand.Our work has been recognised at some of the most highly regarded awards shows in our industry, including: The Football Business Awards, Creative Circle, The Sports Business Awards and The Campaign Experience Awards. As an agency, we have been recognised as one of Campaigns Best Places to Work for two consecutive years.
To give EE’s powerful 5G network centre stage, we partnered with Beatport to create Parallel – the UK’s first hybrid, 5G-powered club night. Entertainers from Beatport’s roster of DJs hit the decks live in Liverpool, delivering back-to-back sets and using the award-winning 5G network to stream and entertain clubbers at two separate rooftop venues across the city. A second event took place in Manchester, highlighting up-and-coming DJs from the city’s local scene. Initially, the DJ's sets pulled in views of well over a million, with the numbers rising every day since. For our clients at EE, the Parallel club nights allowed them to engage a really specific portion of their target audience, proving that a partnership with Beatport was bang on.
JD’s aim was to reaffirm their title as the number one retailer for street style, and so our fully integrated, global campaign ‘King of The Streets’ was born. Spanning 20 markets, at its heart was a two-minute TV ad, ‘JD Street’, starring more than 30 sporting, musical and TV youth culture icons including Little Simz, KSI and Jadon Sancho. As an extension of the TVC and OOH, we launched a mockumentary series via TikTok and JD social channels. Consumers also got a chance to shop their favourite items through a digital, shoppable version of the TVC – stopping and shopping the ad in real time. And if that wasn’t enough for fans to interact with JD Street, a mobile game also gave them the chance to win weekly prizes. ‘King of The Streets’ was a royal success, and the TV spot was crowned YouTube’s most engaging Christmas Ad of 2021.
To help launch the new Group Ordering functionality within the Domino’s app, our summer campaign re-introduced the world to the wonders of yodelling. We embeded the yodel into popular culture, and started a yodelling movement. Working alongside 4Studios and Channel 4, we created ‘Yodel Boiz’ - an underground group of yodellers who put their unique vocal sound to some of the coldest beats in town. Through content that had viewers questioning the reality of yodel rap, we witness a yodel battle and sit in the studio with the Yodel Boiz as they finish their debut album, ‘Beats, Bars n Bratwurst’. The campaign delivered over 3.1m views totalling 53,500k hours viewed with an average of 92% positive sentiment. This was delivered for and in partnership with Havas Media.
The BBC was facing a mass departure of its youth audience, with perceptions of it being out of touch. But, Michaela Coel’s gripping show, I May Destroy You, addressed the tough topic of sexual consent - a theme that really matters to under-35s. We partnered with The Face & gal-dem to shape an authentic conversation around the culture and passions of our audience. Built to coincide with Sexual Health Awareness week, our digital zine 'The Ins and Outs of Consent’, explored the topic of consent from multiple perspectives, and served as an important digital resource. The whole zine was interlaced with evocative video clips and pictures from the show, as well as expert voices.
Aston Martin Formula 1™ needed a launch moment that captured the incredible story of the expertly crafted ARM22 F1 car. To give this launch the traction it deserved, we created, produced and delivered an intense holographic light show using unique laser-tracing projections and cutting-edge HyperVSN holographic displays, never before used in a live event. These immersive visual tools combined with thundering sound design created a multi-sensory spectacle for both physical and virtual viewers. Each animation was carefully designed to represent and tease the features of the new AMR22. Our hybrid event was a livestreamed to over 4m people online, with an overall digital reach of 249m, capturing the attention of the world’s media, partners, and existing and new fans alike. This was delivered for and in partnership with Havas Media.
‘Old Rivals, New Era’ was a campaign, and fresh creative, designed to engage new audiences and get next-generation sports fans to attend the Arsenal Women’s North London Derby in March 2022. The campaign was rolled out across PR, influencer channels and OOH. We engaged with unpaid talent across lifestyle, music, fashion and arts to support, promote and raise awareness of the game generating a combined reach of 4.3 million.
In 2022, Magic: The Gathering celebrated 30 years, and we wanted to tap into cultural nostalgia to mark this milestone. To do this, we showed up with an unexpected yet thrilling content piece – The Battle of The Mechs. Tying into the narrative of the new MTG expansion set, The Brothers’ War, we sought to unleash real world carnage with mechanical, head-to-head combat. Our two teams built and battled their robots in an arena, taking on a series of skill-based challenges in the run up to the ultimate collision, to see which mech would be victorious. In a nod to retro TV gameshows, the content emulated a full-scale TV production, and the battle was presented by one of the UK’s leading presenters and journalists in the gaming space, Shay Thompson. This was delivered for and in partnership with Havas Enertainment.
Major League Baseball needed a campaign to launch their innovative new game format, Home Run Derby X, so we teamed up with talent and creators for a campaign that united music and youth culture – ‘Bring the Noise’. We developed the campaign with the aim of showcasing and teaching the next generation of fans about this new baseball format. We kicked off the campaign with a launch film that introduced the world to Home Run Derby X. Shot in the style of a music video, and fusing baseball with music, fashion and youth culture, Home Run Derby X was introduced to the world. The film’s reach was smashed out of the park through MLB, talent and partner channels.
We changed the way the deaf community experience football with a world first campaign. Taking British Sign Language sports coverage to new heights with EE and BT Sport, we launched ‘New Signing’ back in October 2022, with the help of Jack Grelish, Ben Chillwell, Marc Guehi and Joe Dixon, to name but a few. Damaris Cooke and Rolf Choutan joined New Signing last December, after being chosen from ten high-calibre finalists. Since then, they’ve worked with football presenter, Matt Smith, interviewed England Lionesses Manager, Sarina Wiegman, and gone behind the scenes of live BT Sport programming. They presented the debut episode of 'Sign Up' - the first BSL dedicated highlights show alongside Lionesses legend and BT Sport pundit, Fara Williams. We captured all of these experiences in a six-part documentary series charting their journey. In June, Damaris and Rolf presented coverage ahead of the UEFA Champions League Final, fronting a preview show in BSL – a first for the competition.
The battle against Covid created a new wave of national togetherness, and left us longing for sports culture more than ever. The Commonwealth Games gave fans the opportunity to experience the sense of community they’d been craving. We tapped into this, and created a new fan following for Team England. ‘Bring It Home’ was an always-on PR, social & comms campaign to spark support for the team. With over 800 pieces of social content being created, the launch of Team England on TikTok attracted a new youth audience of 35K followers. This winning campaign formula resulted in combined content views of 9.2M, over 4K pieces of print, 55K pieces of online coverage, over 6.5K pieces of broadcast coverage and an increased brand positivity score.
After a stuffed few months of sales, boosted by the 2022 Men’s Football World Cup and the first post-Covid Christmas, Domino’s knew it was going to be tough to keep pizza sales momentum up during January. While rolling out deals is a quick win for the food category, in these trickier times we went for a different route with a big brand idea to connect our consumers to Domino’s. Enter The World of Pizza Play. Working with 4Studios and Mother’s Best Child we created a documentary style content series focusing on Trevor, a man who likes to be treated like a pizza, and Asha, his long-suffering girlfriend who puts up with this bizarre hobby. The content was pure, unadulterated fun that captured viewers’ attention and provided some light-hearted relief and banter amidst the gloomier marketing landscape. Our views and VTR far surpassed predictions, and we took a hefty slice of attention, becoming 4Studios’ 2nd most engaged piece of Facebook content since it began. This was delivered for and in partnership with Havas Media.
