Rugby World Cup

Inspiring a Generation.

Delivering the most entertaining, engaging and commercially prosperous
rugby event of all time through social media.

Manga style match teaser for the Rugby World Cup Final

A vision for greatness

World Rugby had a simple vision for us around the Rugby World Cup 2019 – be bigger and better than ever. Break through the traditional rugby stereotypes to reach and engage a new, younger audience, and create the most entertaining, engaged and commercially prosperous rugby event in history.

Old Guard and Young Gun creative posts on Rugby World Cup Instagram account

Best-in-class performance

Through our creative, content, social media we seized the initiative to create entertaining, amusing and informative content pre, during and post the tournament across English, French, Spanish and Japanese. We transformed a complicated and supposedly elitist sport into a sport for all; accessible and relatable. This meant creating pan-cultural and popular culture content to feed the mass rugby market in digestible chunks.

Rugby World Cup creative of Rugby player figurine packaging

“Fifty completely understand rugby as a sport, but also the importance of engaging our global audience. They have delivered world class graphics alongside brilliant community management, exceptional, humorous and personable content which has perfectly encapsulated the unique spirit of rugby.”

Marissa Pace
Chief Marketing Officer | World Rugby

Rugby World Cup Emoji Pack laid out on map of Japan

The official RWC2019
emoji pack

Manga Illustration from the Rugby World Cup

The biggest and best. Ever

2.1 billion organic video views later our goal was achieved. We helped to enrich the Rugby World Cup’s already well-known brand by creating eye-catching creative with a Japanese flair, and video content that would make any casual sports fan stop and watch. Rugby as a sport has a particular sense of humour and we picked this up and ran with it, capitalising on popular culture and trends to delight not only existing rugby fans, but new followers too.

#1 most engaged rugby event of all time

2.1 billion organic video views

6% engagement rate

15.6% channel growth

1.8M new followers

Player of the Match graphic depicting Gael Fickou

Player of the Match graphic depicting Kotaro Matsushima

Creative graphic celebrating Schalk Brits statistics for South Africa

Creative graphic celebrating Augustin Creevy's 88th Cap for Argentina

Stat graphic depicting the Barrett Brothers caps for the New Zealand All Blacks

“These Sumo-themed posters for the #RWC2019 semi-finals are seriously cool”

@btsportrugby

Phones displaying World Cup Semi Final teaser posts on Instagram

The Final and beyond

As with every match of the Rugby World Cup 2019, we covered the Final in immersive, real-time detail. At its culmination, we had helped deliver the most engaged Rugby World Cup in history with 6x more social media views than the last tournament. 600+ million minutes of organic non-live video watched. 15.6% growth across all channels with 1.8m new followers (all organic). All knockout games filled at least three of the five worldwide trends on Twitter, some occupied all five.