Tender Process | PR Agency

6th April, 2022

Bowls England are looking for an agency partner to capitalize on the opportunity afforded by the home Commonwealth Games in 2022 from a PR perspective. We want a superb partner to bring a selection of our athletes’ stories to life, and sell them in to both sport and lifestyle media outlets.  This visibility should position the values of our sport and inspire people to participate.

Below is a short overview of the project. For a full brief and further supporting documents, please email rob.short@bowlsengland.com

Background

Our new strategy Fit For The Future, launched in August 2021, has at its heart one key question; “Does it increase participation?”. Everything we work on has to increase participation in the sport.

Building The Brand Of Bowls

This is our first priority in our Fit For The Future strategy.

Bowls must be perceived as relevant in today’s society and people outside the sport should consider it a credible option for their valuable leisure time. This requires it to be visible and for people to be excited by the benefit it may bring them. The Commonwealth Games squad is in a unique position to demonstrate our four truths of the sport as above.

To achieve this brand objective, we will:

  • Develop and implement a brand strategy that consistently, coherently and imaginatively promotes bowls’ capacity to build a better society and benefit individuals.
  • Grow the profile of our sport in traditional and new media through powerful storytelling.
  • Support and showcase winning England teams by effectively managing and maximizing our international performance programme.
  • Deliver an inspiring programme of activity to capitalise on the unparalleled opportunity of a home Commonwealth Games.

The Project

We are looking for a PR agency to drive the profile of the sport and our Performance Squad ahead of, during and after the Commonwealth Games.

Our Team England squad for the games all have deep backstories around their journey in the sport. They all symbolise a different element of the reality of bowls. You can find their biographies here: Team England Player Profiles – Bowls England

Whilst we believe these are strong stories, the work does not need to be restricted to these athletes and we would welcome our agency partner’s thoughts and expertise on what other avenues could generate our desired outcomes.

Measurement

Ultimately our measure is about reach amongst our target demographic and some evidence that this has translated into participation.  We will ask people who ‘have a go’ at bowls where they heard about our sport.  More specifically, we would like to see –

  • Pieces in national media
  • Primetime TV coverage
  • Primetime Radio coverage
  • Magazine profile pieces.
  • Online

Tender Requirements

Please submit a proposal which outlines:

  1. Your credentials and experience as an agency.
  2. How you would approach the project.
  3. Which titles/media we should be focusing on to hit our target audience.
  4. A rough budget estimate for this work.

Please send to Rob Short by Wednesday 20th April at 5pm. Shortlisting will then take place, with follow up discussions taking place the following week.

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