Oppo:
“Springbok & Orlando Pirates Official Partner”
Launched in South Africa in 2021, electronics manufacturer Oppo entered an environment already cluttered with a number of established technology competitors, so they challenged Octagon to help “Get consumers to try something new.”
No stranger to partnering with top international sporting bodies and events around the world to “stand out and make a difference,” OPPO turned to Octagon in 2022 to develop a unique sponsorship strategy and identify possible partnership opportunities within the market that would allow OPPO to “connect with fans” and showcase the brand’s leading technology.
In sports-mad South Africa, one of the best and most rapid ways to build brand recognition is to partner with sports teams, and they don’t get any bigger than the Springboks (South African National Rugby Team) and the Orlando Pirates (a national football/soccer club).
Octagon negotiated partnerships with both the Springboks and Pirates teams on behalf of OPPO to grow brand awareness, increase its share of voice, partner with major networks, and further build its social media footprint.
Our approach to meeting these objectives was to “connect people to people, and fans to their teams.” This was achieved through two separate campaigns: For the Springboks, we devised the #InspirationAhead campaign, while we built the #Gamechangers campaign around the Orlando Pirates.
Both campaigns presented fans with unparalleled access to their teams, a first in South Africa. We helped provide fans with the chance to share personal messages with the players, partake in meet-and-greets with the teams at special events, and even join the teams during away games through various consumer competitions. We also facilitated partnerships for OPPO with the team’s mobile network providers (MTN and Vodacom) to further enhance the fan experience.
All campaign objectives across both partnerships were achieved, with brand awareness increasing by better than 50% and the share of voice jumping to 21% throughout the campaigns. We partnered with both Vodacom & MTN to enhance the experience on a number of levels, including retail offerings, brand activations, consumer competitions, and social media engagement. As a result, we were able to boost OPPO’s social media following by more than 300%.