Pitch, please bot for Adidas
A WhatsApp chatbot that provides dedicated pitches for women, girls and non-binary players
Platform
Industry
Retail
Use case
Marketing, Lead Generation
Language
English
Summary
One of the biggest barriers for female-identifying and non-binary football players is good access to pitch space. Adidas wanted to create awareness towards this problem, and with Hill+Knowlton Strategies, one of the world’s leading global communications companies, they decided to create a campaign called “Pitch, please.” The core of this campaign was a WhatsApp chatbot, so female-identifying and non-binary players could chat with it and find a pitch in London to play football together). Apart from that, users also could get map directions to the pitch (Google Maps), provide feedback about the chatbot experience, and share the chatbot on Instagram or Facebook. Then H+K using our BotsCrew Platform could download the list of players as an XSL (Name, Phone Number, position, DOB, location, time slots) and contact them if additional players were needed for the game. The goal of the chatbot was to get 100 users to book a pitch. H+K contacted BotsCrew in 1.5 weeks before the campaign started. We had less than 2 weeks to develop a chatbot. BotsCrew successfully launched Pitch, please chatbot that existed throughout July 2022.
Pitch, please campaign results
1 month
campaign duration
338
users talked to Pitch please chatbot during the campaign
149
users booked a pitch, the goal was 100!
345
people came to Haggerston School and Fulham FC’s Motspur Park complex to play football
The Challenge
According to a report carried out by Women In Sport in March 2022, 59% of teenage girls who used to be interested in the sport drop out due to inadequate opportunities and facilities. Furthering that, research undertaken by adidas’ Breaking Barriers Academy suggests that players in male-dominated sports tend to experience unequal treatment in regards to facilities and access, with some clubs offering only communal changing spaces that not everyone is comfortable in.
Versus, adidas Launch New Campaign to Provide Free Pitch Space to Women, Girls and Non-Binary Players
The lack of pitch space for girls, women, and non-binary people to play has long been one of the biggest challenges facing the sport. adidas wanted to correct one of the game’s greatest inequalities and partnered with Hill+Knowlton Strategies (H+K) to create a campaign that would bring attention to the problem and motivate players to book pitches.
H+K had an experience using WhatsApp chatbots for their campaigns. They saw the chatbots’ results and decided to use this tool again with the Pitch, please campaign.
The Problem
There were two challenges for H+K. The first one, they had a problem with finding new chatbot vendors. What’s worse, they had less than two weeks for chatbot creation as the campaign had to start on July 7th.
The Solution
On the first call with H+K, we showed our use cases and expertise. H+K decided that BotsCrew was the best one to create this chatbot.
Pitch, please chatbot was a simple WhatsApp chatbot that asked a few questions, to clarify if the user is from London (as pitches were available only in London), then gathered contact information, date of birth and proposed available time slots for pitch booking. Apart from that, users also could get map directions to the pitch (Google Maps), provide feedback about the chatbot experience, and share the chatbot on Instagram or Facebook.
Then, using our Chatbot Platform, the clients could:
- Login into a password-protected platform to access the analytical data
- Download the list of players as an XSL (Name, Phone Number, position, DOB, location, time slots in separate columns, level, agreed to get a call)
- Review the conversations between the bot and the users
- Use Live chat when people had a problem
The Approach
BotsCrew has tons of experience in doing WhatsApp chatbots and assisting in getting WhatsApp Business API approval. Also, we are very familiar with ASAP use cases when you have to deliver a high-quality product in a short time, specifically for marketing chatbot use cases.
In less than a week, we managed to create a conversational flow and the chatbot, tested it with our internal group, got an approval from the client, and successfully launched “Pitch, please” chatbot on the campaign official starting date.
H+K contacted us on June 29, 2022, and we released a chatbot on July 7, 2022. The team consisted of 4 people (Developer, Conversational Designer, QA, and Account Manager).
The Results
During one month, 338 users talked to Pitch please chatbot, 149 users booked a pitch, and, finally, 345 people came to Haggerston School and Fulham FC’s Motspur Park complex to play football.
Surprisingly, we noticed that people still try to book a pitch from a chatbot even after the campaign finished. We changed the previous Welcome Message to navigate people to the new website where they could book a pitch next month.
The chatbot’s results exceeded our expectations, and working with BotsCrew was an extreme relief. We’re happy that we found BotsCrew. We can’t recommend them highly enough.
