PRESS RELEASE: The FA salute the Lionesses

PRESS RELEASE: The FA salute the Lionesses. 

With the Lionesses set to kick-off their final UEFA European Championship group game this upcoming Thursday against Portugal, The Football Association has implemented significant marketing plans to galvanise support across the nation and inspire young girls to take up the game. 

The support stems from The FA’s wider For All brand purpose and its recently launched Women’s Strategy ‘Gameplan for Growth’ with three main targets; to double participation and the number of fans by 2020 and achieve success on the world stage by 2023.

Last week, the FA launched its Salute campaign, working with Little Mix to engage fans to show their support to the team this summer. The FA and Little Mix released an edited version of the band’s hit-single Salute, featuring cameos from the Lionesses, stars from the England men’s team and a number of grassroots footballers.  The campaign has called for fans of all ages across the country to show their support by submitting a salute on social media by using #Lionesses.  

The FA is continuing to release videos of other celebrities saluting in order to drive the organic reach of the campaign in the build up to the tournament. 

The FA’s marketing team also recently announced a three-year partnership with Disney, kicking off ahead of the Euros. The partnership aims to increase participation in, and challenge perceptions of, girls’ football as well as empower and build the self-confidence of young females across the country. The FA will work together with Disney utilising their unique range of channels, characters and franchises. The first initiative of the partnership sees Disney team up with the Lionesses to challenge the clichés of what it means to be a modern Princess to promote and inspire girls to fulfill their potential.

Mark Bullingham, The FA’s Group Commercial & Marketing Director, said: “We want to raise the profile of the Lionesses to help inspire a generation of girls to get active through football.  Our salute campaign is already performing brilliantly to get the country behind the team and to get to know the players.  Our partnership with Disney will help us to take campaigns like this to a new level in the future.” 

Additionally The FA has acquired out of home advertising to further raise the profile of the team. Creative asking fans to ‘Follow the #Lionesses this summer’ has appeared on buses, billboards and in shopping centres and train stations across the nation. The advertising runs in conjunction with a significant campaign from Channel 4, UK broadcaster of the tournament, which includes TV advertising, a national billboard campaign, newspaper wraps, radio ads and social media targeting.  

All of the activity has been supported by the launch of The FA’s new For Girls digital platform (www.­TheFA.­com/­ForGirls) which will act as a hub to follow the Lionesses this summer and resource for elite and grassroots football for women and girls beyond the conclusion of the tournament. The new, mobile-first site, developed in partnership with Cognizant, aims to be both informative and inspirational for both parents and their children. During the tournament, the For Girls platform will also host an image aggregator created in partnership with social content marketing platform Stackla that will house all salute submissions using #Lionesses for the players and fans to view throughout the tournament. 

England have their final group game of the competition against Portugal on Thursday 27th July , a game televised on Channel 4 (kick-off at 19.45). For more information across the tournament, visit www.­TheFA.­com/­ForGirls and follow @Lionesses on Twitter and Instagram.