Lidl encourages girls participation in football with Kelly Smith

With the FA’s Girls Week fast approaching and more than 60,000 people registered to take part, Lidl wanted to encourage girls across the country to continue to participate in football.

Challenge:


Lidl became lead partner of The FA Skills programme in November 2015, working with The FA to get more girls playing with both mixed and girls only sessions. Since becoming lead partner Lidl has funded nationwide girls only sessions, meaning girls up and down the country can attend for free. With The FA Girls' Football Week fast approaching and more than 60,000 people registered to take part, Lidl wanted to use the opportunity to not only highlight the tremendous work that both organisations have achieved over the last 10 months but to also continue to encourage girls across the country to continue to participate in football.

Solution:

markettiers, with Lidl, conducted research with parents and their children to understand current perceptions surrounding football and even though in 2016 at least 110,000 girls will have played football, our research revealed that parents were still five times more likely to encourage their sons to play football than their daughters. Following the research results, markettiers worked with Arsenal and Ex England ladies’ player Kelly Smith and the team at Lidl to address the perpetuating issues and stereotypes around girls in sport; messaging that was then used as part of a broadcast day.

Results:

The team at markettiers secured interviews across TV and radio, including an interview with Sky Sunrise. As well as securing interviews across 13 outlets such as Sky Sunrise, BBC Radio London, BBC Gloucester and BBC Tees an interview was also secured with Sky News Radio which made the content widely available to all the stations on the commercial network.