The stats....
- 7m+ total views 💈
- 5.2m organic / 1.9m paid views 👀
- 607k engagements 😍
- 82k link clicks to Visit Rwanda cultural tourism page 🦍
- 4.5m Instagram story impressions 📱
- Content saw a 2.4% increase in Visit Rwanda’s social following 📈
- Facebook post alone watched for a total 25,375 hours with an average watch time of 29 seconds 🕰
- The best-performing post on Arsenal’s Instagram TV of all time! 🏆
The story...
Arsenal Football Club and Visit Rwanda, Official Tourism and Sleeve Partner, have been creating engaging and entertaining branded content since the partnership began in 2018. In January 2020, the pair continued this trend, launching The Amasunzu Barbershop.
This branded content was created in order to educate fans on Rwandan culture and encourage them to visit the country. Rather than simply place Visit Rwanda’s logo on the videos, both parties worked hard to create a set that felt truly Rwandan. It featured Arsenal first-team players Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Hector Bellerin and David Luiz, as well as barber influencer Justin Carr.
Justin and Visit Rwanda's Emmanuel Ruhumuliza led the players through barbershop culture and style, while also looking back on the players’ own hairstyles throughout their careers. Emmanuel introduced the players to the traditional Rwandan royal hairstyle, Amasunzu, while educating the players on Rwandan cultural tourism. This message was enhanced by a purpose-built landing page which was included in the posts when the content went live, inviting fans to learn more about Rwandan culture and encouraging them to book their trip.
The strategy...
Longer edits were distributed on IGTV and Facebook due to the current preference for long-form content. The results were fantastic with these two posts achieving more than 4.6m organic views alone.
Instagram stories allowed fans to feel like they were interacting with the players. Utilising a quiz element like this had worked well in the past and proved to be hugely successful with the fans once again, with 4.5m impressions across the seven slates.
A different but equally engaging edit was produced for Twitter, encouraging fans to have a wider discussion about the content and Rwandan culture. This led to fans wanting to know more, with 37,596 link clicks to the cultural landing page.
Edits also went out the club’s YouTube channel for increased awareness and LinkedIn as a B2B piece.
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