6 online contest ideas for the Six Nations rugby competition
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The Rugby World Cup may be the most viewed rugby event in the world, but it’s also only contested every 4 years.
Possibly the second most important – certainly in the Northern Hemisphere – is the Six Nations, and mercifully for marketers looking for big sporting events to piggy-back campaigns off of, you can count on it coming around every Spring.
It’s also the oldest surviving international rugby event in the world, dating back to 1883 when it was called the Home Nations (contested between England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales). It was renamed the Five Nations in 1910 with the addition of France, and became the Six Nations in the year 2000 with the addition of Italy.
You don’t need to be the team’s marketing department or an official sponsor to get in on the action. If your target customer base features a strong contingent of rugby fans, this will likely dominate their attention over February and March. This means there’s an opportunity to harvest some of that attention by tying your marketing to the Six Nations, and there’s no more appropriate marketing method to sports fans than through gamification.
So here are our top 6 ideas for Six Nations-based online contests to boost engagements for your planned marketing.
1. Six Nations Conversion Challenge (Rugby Game)
If you want to speak to rugby fans and get them to pay attention to your messaging, it’s hard to go wrong with a customised Rugby Game.
Adjust the advertising hoarding and the logo on the ball to match your branding, add a custom animated backdrop for an extra slick experience, and enable the leaderboard to drive up participation by appealing to competitive natures.
Use it to collect customer data through the data collection form, show them a promotional video on an intermediate screen, or deliver a CTA to drive traffic to your strategic pages on the end screen. This set-up is pitch perfect for achieving any number of marketing objectives.
2. The Wooden Spoon Quiz (Quiz)
The Six Nations is honestly kind of bizarre when you think about it. Its participants after the British and Irish teams are almost seemingly arbitrary. There are multiple rivalry trophies, competitions, and feats that can be achieved within the tournament, and then there’s also the 100-plus years of history to go through.
With that in mind, you could code a Quiz to the theme of the wooden spoon, the metaphorical award given to the team who comes dead last.
How do you code it as such? By posing each question: “Choose the wrong answer,” and then putting forward 4 perfectly plausible Six Nations statements.
Choose the wrong answer:
A) Only Scotland compete for a rivalry trophy in every game
B) As the most recent addition to Six Nations, Italy contest no rivalry trophies
C) Of the current stadiums, Stade Pierre-Mauroy is the smallest by capacity
D) Only England and Ireland have never finished last
Enable the leaderboard: Find the biggest loser to give an actual wooden spoon to, or use the Drimify platform’s native draw feature to randomly select competitors from the top 50 to reward with a prize.
Why this works: It’s a challenging pub quiz-style round with a twist. To actually name the incorrect answer, you need to either really know something’s wrong, or be able to vet and confirm all the correct answers. It’s a contest that will speak to the real rugby fans in your audience who fancy themselves aficionados of the game.
3. Triple Crown (Combo™)
The “Triple Crown” is another tournament within the Six Nations tournament. If either Scotland, Ireland, Wales, or England beat all the other Home Nations, they win the Triple Crown and win the Triple Crown trophy.
A solid gamification marketing idea that also works in 3s is to use Drimify’s Combo™ to combine multiple game mechanics into a direct, seamless experience.
Game 1 could be a Six Nations trivia Quiz, game 2 could be a Rugby Game, and game 3 could be an instant win game (maybe a Slot Machine to keep it a game of 3s for the Triple Crown theme).
Throughout the experience, intermediate pop-ups can be used to educate participants about your product or promotion. The first 2 games set the scene, provide a fun experience, and give opportunities to distribute strategic information, and the final game is their chance at a prize.
A great try on its own, but why not score the conversion? Load the instant win game at the end with generic promo codes, and set it to 100% winning game. Then everyone who plays is not only up to speed on your product, but they’ve also been incentivized with the limited time offer.
4. Tack-la Mole (Whack a Mole)
Rugby’s a physical game full of big hits, so applying that logic to a fun gaming experience can give you a Six Nations-themed Whack a Mole.
Whack – or tackle – the opposing teams’ players as they pop up mid-run, ball in hand, making a beeline for your try line. Spare the referee (rugby is a gentleman’s game, afterall) or lose time on the clock, giving you less opportunities to score points.
Activate the leaderboard: Make it a contest. Then, when the campaign ends, use the draw feature available in all Drimify apps to randomly award a prize to participants finishing inside the top 20.
Go hard or go home: If you literally manufacture rugby balls, or you’re a rugby-focused sports news site, why not give your Tack-la Mole 5 levels, and customise your “moles” or hittable objects around each of the 5 teams you’re facing?
You can customise Drimify games to be as long or as short, as complex or as simple, as your project, campaign, and audience dictates
5. Luck of the Ruck (Wheel of Fortune)
Put a stylised, filtered video of your nation’s team for the background, add your logo, then fill up a Wheel of Fortune game with your branded icons and prizes.
Players pull a lever or push a button, and the lucky few will win a prize!
A simple, visually engaging game of chance that everyone understands.
Disclaimer: We’re aware that rucks are a pivotal aspect of rugby requiring a lot of skill and physicality, but this doesn’t change the fact that it rhymes with “luck.”
6. Grand Slam Calendar – Believe! (Dynamic Path™)
In the context of the Six Nations, the Grand Slam is an informal honour which occurs when a nation beats every other side, and essentially goes undefeated through the tournament.
For longer, sustained engagement throughout the Six Nations, use the Dynamic Path™ to build a calendar of games, each unlocking on the day of your audience’s chosen side’s games.
For example, if you’re based in Scotland, build it around Scotland’s home and away matches, if you’re in Italy, build it around Italy’s schedule, etc. etc.
Enable the leaderboard: The odds are, no side is going to do the Grand Slam (though it happens more than you’d expect); and there are 5 other national squads of professional, motivated rugby players wanting to add to their legacy and stop your team from winning, but there’s no reason why your audience can’t be winners.
Sprinkle in a few instant win games around game days, and then have the top 20 on the leaderboard at the end be entered into a draw for a grand prize.
Expert advice
If your audience is in any of the 6 nations, or they’re rugby fans likely to be invested in the Six Nations, this is a great marketing opportunity.
If your audience or target customer segments are into it, you can get in on the action, and nothing speaks to sports fans – diehards and casuals – like games and contests, which create an interactive element that either allows them to win a prize, or show off their knowledge or skills.
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