Overview
Who
Coaching Association of Canada
What
- Branding
- Website Development
- Logos and Corporate Identities
- Marketing and Communications Strategy
- Campaign Management and Execution
- Graphic Design
- Microsites and Landing Pages
- Website Planning
- Email Campaigns
- Content Strategy and Creation
- Website Design
- Copywriting
- Printing
- Video
- Member Engagement
- Promotional Products
- Social Media
- Trade Show Displays
- Advertising
Challenge
The CAC was seeking a marketing agency support to help them develop, launch and manage their Responsible Coaching Movement (RCM) campaign. They wanted to raise general awareness about this important movement while also increasing the number of RCM pledges from sport organizations across Canada.
This entailed a multifaceted approach to incorporate all the strategic and creative elements that helped bring this integrated campaign to life with the message Safe, Smart and Secure.
Target
The goal was to drive awareness and action among CAC partners and sport organizations, coaches and participants.
Execution
After some initial meetings with the CAC team about objectives, we developed a full marketing strategy for a five week campaign around the theme of Safe, Smart, Secure.
In addition to the campaign having its own visuals, we also refreshed the logo and branding for the overall Responsible Coaching Movement. Their original logo lacked relevance, visual impact and was not consistent with more recent branding used by the organization. As such, redesigning it was the first creative deliverable in the project.
A core campaign initiative was to encourage sport organizations across Canada to take the Responsible Coaching Movement pledge. This pledge was prominently featured in the campaign messaging and marketing collateral, as well as on the refreshed Responsible Coaching Movement web page.
Solutions
Campaign Strategy and Branding
In collaboration with the CAC, we established the campaign theme of Safe, Smart, Secure. This tagline is also a reflection of the three pillars of the Responsible Coaching Movement. Since the original RCM logo was developed several years ago and lacked relevance, it underwent a complete redesign to align with the branding and other assets developed for the campaign. Pillar logos were also created to correspond to each of the three core areas of the RCM. The entire family of logos was inspired by badges used within various sports.
Landing Page Design
The coach.ca website was not intuitive or easy for staff to update in the back end, which made launching new pages a frustrating process for all involved. Rather than simply design a one-time landing page for the campaign, Cyan worked with the CAC team to establish a set of reusable page components that they could use to create new landing pages within their Drupal CMS.
Thanks to the introduction of customized components based on flexible modular design, the Cyan team made the process of updating or adding new pages to the site more intuitive. In addition to simplifying the content entry process for the RCM, this new page builder can also be used across the entire CAC website for other programs and campaigns.
For the campaign itself, four web pages were created, one for the Responsible Coaching Movement, as well as for each of the three pillars.
Social Media, Email Marketing, Paid Ads
The Safe, Smart, Secure campaign was actively promoted on social media to raise awareness among the target audiences. The posts were also designed to encourage the 65 National Sport Organizations and other key partners to share and promote content related to the Responsible Coaching Movement on their own channels.
Bilingual messaging and supporting graphics were developed to be used in email marketing, both as one-off messages to a distribution list of over two-hundred thousand coaches, as well as for partner updates to the numerous organizations aligned with CAC.
Cyan also crafted a paid ad strategy to be used to invite sport organizations to take the RCM pledge, as well as to help raise general public awareness of the campaign. Google paid display and search ads were used in conjunction with social media advertising and retargeting to help generate close to four million impressions during the five week campaign and drive a considerable amount of traffic to the coach.ca website.
Video
Cyan produced two videos for this campaign. One was an informational video produced in two languages outlining the three pillars of the Responsible Coaching Movement. It was also aimed at encouraging sport organizations to take the RCM pledge. This video was promoted via email marketing and on social channels, and is featured prominently on the RCM webpage on coach.ca.
The second was a campaign video called ‘Sound of Sport’ that was used for social media advertising, primarily on YouTube, to help raise general awareness about the movement. The video incorporated sounds from numerous sport-related activities, such as hitting a tennis ball or skating on ice, to create a unique soundscape.
Marketing and Resource Toolkit for Partners
It was imperative for CAC’s partners to play an active role in helping to raise awareness and encourage sport organizations in their network to take the RCM pledge. To help support these efforts, a Marketing Toolkit was developed for the campaign to be shared with CAC partners.
This toolkit contained suggested copy and supporting graphics for social media posts, website pages, and email updates. It also contained a section of FAQs and other downloadable material such as the infographics, a website badge, and new logos.
Infographics
A series of four infographics were developed as part of the campaign, one was about the RCM more generally while the other three each focused on one of the core pillars.
Printed material and merchandise
Cyan designed and produced a number of items to accompany the Responsible Coaching Movement and the Safe, Smart, Secure campaign. These included posters, postcards, apparel and other campaign collateral.
Results
The campaign achieved several significant milestones during its 5 week run. The total number of RCM pledges topped one thousand during the campaign, and after a few weeks the new RCM webpage accounted for the most overall traffic on the coach.ca website, surpassing even the homepage!
This was aided by the fact that the campaign generated almost four million impressions in the five week period, with an average click-through-rate of 4.6% across all platforms, exceeding Google’s average of 3.17% for search ads and 0.46% for display. Meanwhile the Safe, Smart, Secure awareness video achieved 162,500 views for the English version and over 45,000 views for the French one. As of May 2022, these videos have by far the most number of views on the CAC YouTube channel and continue to be used to help raise awareness about the RCM.
Going forward, many of the assets created for the RCM will continue to be used and updated by the Coaching Association of Canada.
The Cyan Team did great work and provided wonderful support for the RCM campaign.
I was impressed with the excellent management of the project, the intuitiveness and responsiveness of the creative team, and thrilled to see the successful results of the digital campaign based on Cyan’s solid recommendations.
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