Respect campaign - Redhouse Lane Communications

The Football Association: Respect campaign

Interactivity makes the site and its lessons more memorable

Interactivity makes the site and its lessons more memorable

Film excels at driving home a point on an emotional level

How the FA is helping supporters show some respect

Challenge

Grassroots football in England is under threat - especially at junior level. Each year, dozens of referees and thousands of children give up the game. Why? They've been driven away by verbal abuse or aggressive behaviour from the touchline. And the guilty parties are too often the parents of the kids themselves.

Tackling this problem is a major part of the Football Association's Respect Campaign. So they commissioned Redhouse Lane to develop a dedicated web guide targeted specifically at parents on the touchline.

The goal was to inform, guide and support – but not be seen as lecturing or telling off.

Our response

The Respect Guide for Parents and Carers is a multimedia microsite that sits off the FA's main website. (http://www.thefa.com/respectguide/)

It's a user-friendly resource that raises parents awareness of the problem and explains how they can best show their support.

To achieve the right result we used:

high impact drama / short videos to show the devastating impact of touchline misbehaviour
credible role models / interviews with respected professional footballers and pundits to add weight to the campaign
interactivity / questionnaires to help parents work out appropriate behaviour for themselves.

The module is now required watching for any parents or carers whose children join a club at grassroots level. And everyone who completes the programme is entitled to an official FA certificate to prove it.

Result

Two years after launch, over 18,000 parents have completed the learning module.

As a result, the number of young players and referees giving up the game has fallen dramatically – all of which bodes well for the future of the English game.