The ‘Beat the Scrum’ campaign is an ongoing partnership with the Rugby club, Widnes Vikings and the local NHS service. This breakthrough campaign uses the Widnes Viking players and legends of the game to act as spokespeople, engaging the local residents and fans of the rugby club, educating viewers on how to choose the most appropriate NHS service for them, dependant on their symptoms, injury or illness.
The brief
Beat the Scrum came to us needing a platform for their campaign. Their plan was to create a bank of video content to circulate on social media from match days and specific informational pieces filmed on site at some of the NHS locations in the area. The website was to act as a hub to house all the content as well as act as a directory for the local NHS services.
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Tackling the problem
We started by creating the website identity by using the colours that are within the Beat the Scrum logo. Keeping the black and white of the Widnes Vikings team colours, which is fairly neutral, we then used the striking blue of the NHS logo for key calls to action and colour treatments on the campaign photography.
We used this colour scheme throughout the website to build up the brand recognition as quickly as possible. The campaign materials around the grounds and the team shirt helped build this up quickly. With such a simple partnership of these recognisable colours, the teamwork between the NHS and Widnes Vikings is clearly conveyed and works in harmony with the campaign.
The cross in place of the ‘T’ is a confident nod to the multitude of NHS services available for different types of ailments, from ambulances to pharmacies, any NHS service is identifiable by the cross that it is decorated with. By adding this to the logo, it again allows the entire message to subtly be portrayed through this alone. We designed some further illustrations to build on this identity for the four main services we were trying to raise awareness for, Pharmacies, General Practice Surgery, Walk in & Urgent Care centres and Accident & Emergency. The addition of small, hand drawn style images produced a sense of fun, helping to create a more accessible feel to a serious subject matter and encouraging people to visit the website and learn more.

It was important the website looked fun and inviting, remaining clear and informative, in order to achieve the aim of the campaign. We didn’t want to criticise local residents with current local NHS service statistics but instead arm them with the knowledge to make an informed decision, showing the public other options to use when they are in need of medical care and taking the pressure off Accident and Emergency. When in pain or a crisis it is easy to think that calling 999 is the only option, it was important that the campaign raised awareness about other local NHS services within the local community in order to alleviate the strain.
We made sure both the rugby stars promoting the campaign and the NHS (stars) staff that are involved were visible, with lighthearted captions positioned around the campaign pages to encourage viewers to take notice of the message behind the campaign and sign up to the mailing list for more information.
Building a website to host video content does not come without challenges. The site needed to work responsively on mobile devices, quickly stream content over mobile data on match days in the grounds, navigate quickly to the different areas of the website where further seasonal specific campaign information was housed and look great to a target audience ranging from 10-90+. Rugby fans are fans for life!
We used video compression technology so we were able to house the promotional videos involving the rugby team. Thrusting the sporting heroes on the front page of the website, giving them pride of place, of course!
Winners
This campaign website has been a huge success so far. The clients are very happy with the final design of the identity and website and, already, the site has had over 500,000 views, a great result for a worthwhile cause. The popularity of the campaign, including the website, has been recognised at the NHS Sustainability Awards in London and received the Rosa Parks Award from the Academy Of Fab NHS Stuff.
More recently, the campaign has won the 2018 Leaders in Sports awards, in the ‘Best Sponsorship’ category! An amazing achievement that is deserved of all the hard work put into this campaign through multiple channels and organisations. The campaign was up against some incredible teams, such as the NFL, LA Clippers and agencies including Saatchi. We couldn’t be prouder to be a part of this campaign.
