Emotive social campaign for the award-winning ‘Finding Jack Charlton’ film

The Brief

Having previously led the social media promotion of several other sports documentaries produced by Noah Media Group, we were asked again by the innovative production company to support the release of ‘Finding Jack Charlton’. 

The documentary is a beautiful tribute to an English World Cup winning legend, exploring how he became an Irish hero, his difficult fraternal relationship and his previously undocumented battle with dementia. NMG therefore wanted a sensitive and evocative social media campaign that aligned with their untraditional film distribution model.

Creative and strategy

Through an initial planning workshop with NMG, we established the film’s narrative and formulated how we would reach the target audience through the campaign’s content. We aimed to deliver a campaign that would generate sales and drive awareness but equally reflect the voices of those in the film who had felt Jack's impact by celebrating his life and achievements.

Considering Jack's personal battle with dementia, we also wanted to use the campaign to sensitively represent the detrimental effect the illness can have on a person’s memory. With this approach in mind, we were incredibly proud to have Alzheimer's Society and The Alzheimer Society of Ireland as the charity partners for the film.

We planned for the campaign to chronologically follow Jack’s football career from Leeds United to the English national team and on to managing Ireland. Aside from the trailer, the posts focused on remembering Jack’s career performed the best though the more emotional, dementia-related posts were also among the highest in terms of impressions.

For the visual aspect of the campaign, we combined the fantastic array of film and images from Jack’s career with his hundreds of personal handwritten notes to create stunning assets. These were combined with footage, stories and quotes from the film alongside interviews discussing Jack’s career and later life to deliver a remarkable insight into the legend and generate a ‘community’ feel to the campaign, uniting followers in an intimate journey through Jack’s life. The fantastic engagement the campaign received speaks to the success of this approach and was most notable on Instagram where we delivered a high-quality account that truly reflected the tribute theme of the entire campaign.

To ensure the success of the social media promotion, we also engaged in online conversations across all channels and, on the trailer’s launch day, we were able to create outstanding organic results by messaging key accounts and amplifying the buzz throughout the day.

The Result

The campaign achieved over 2 million trailer views, supported the fantastic sales on DVD and digital download and amplified the incredible number of 5 star reviews received by the film. Our ‘quality over quantity’ approach to content ensured the delivery of an inspirational, creative campaign in tribute to a legend.