Nationwide Building Society has teamed up with communications agency, VCCP to launch campaign Lessons From The Game. 

The integrated campaign will air in the run up to the UEFA Euros Football tournament and will drive awareness for their partnership with the FA Respect Programme, demonstrating how integral grassroots football can be in helping to build a mutual respectful society.

Like so many sports, the pandemic has significantly impacted grassroots football with independent research showing that nearly 4,000 local clubs will struggle to survive post-pandemic even though 75 per cent of parents expressed that their children had missed the ability to play.

Launching with a hero 60” film, the campaign features young football player ‘Finton’ and his grassroots football club Urmston Meadowside FC. Finton’s own voice narrates the story of his grassroots footballing career. With the help of British poet Mike Garry, Garry took Finton’s own words and re-arranged them into a poem, a process referred to as ‘found poetry.

Alongside the hero TVC, the campaign will run for three weeks across digital and print and OOH and will also highlight moments of mutual respect from the tournament to reinforce the same values that Nationwide Building Society cherishes. Media planning and execution was managed by Wavemaker.

“All too often football gets a bad rap. But you only have to visit one of the thousands of grassroots football clubs to see the positive role football plays in helping young people to develop core values of acceptance, inclusion, kindness and mutual respect for their teammates, officials and coaches – skills and values that players learn on the pitch but take into wider society too. Finton’s story encapsulates that perfectly and if we all follow his example, we will keep the beautiful game beautiful for generations to come” said Head of Advertising at Nationwide Building Society, Paul Hibbs.