Wattie’s – Volunteer Coach of the Year

Celebrating volunteer sports coaches

The Brief

The Wattie’s Volunteer Coach of the Year awards help promote Wattie’s commitment to the grassroots communities and show support for volunteer sports coaches who give up their time to help foster young sporting talent.  2008 marks the fifth consecutive year of the awards and the challenge is to keep them fresh, relevant and meaningful for the many target audiences. The awards are co-sponsored by SPARC, and call for nominations from sports teams and athletes to tell us why their coach is the best. We work with 17 regional sports trusts around the country to generate nominations, and each hosts a regional event to announce their local winners, one from each going on to attend the national final.

<Our Solution

This year a number of new elements were introduced to the awards, including a retail partner and by utilising non traditional channels to raise awareness, particularly online.

• Bebo and Trade Me – utilising these online channels targeted two very different audiences. Setting up a page on social networking site Bebo, gave us the opportunity to target kids aged 9 – 15, while messages on Trade Me community notice boards reached parents and sportspeople.
• National sports organisations – acted as ambassadors for the awards, and reached a large number of grassroots coaches, their teams and players.
• Retail partner – Stirling Sports was brought on board as a key prize sponsor, they also actively promoted the awards in their 30+ stores.

Results

The 2008 awards received a record-breaking 3,870+ nominations.  The Bebo page was a great success and will be used again in future years.  Through the site, we joined up with prominent pages (Silver Ferns, All Blacks) who lent their support to the awards, and we were able to spread the word via a topical awards blog.  An impressive range of media has been has been achieved including regional print and radio, national daily newspapers, online coverage and magazines.  The awards event for the 17 national finalists will be held in November. This is a special occasion for the coaches and their supporters where we announce national winners in three categories (student, general, lifetime) and an overall Supreme Winner.