Barclays' core purpose is to be ‘opportunity makers for people’.  ​

Iris’ commercial strategy team challenged the bank’s current sponsorship strategy and saw an opportunity to support this purpose, whilst helping women’s football become recognised and supported at an equal level to men’s. ​

We successfully worked with senior stakeholders to provide a business case for sponsoring women’s football. And went on to deliver the strategy, PR & social content for the first title sponsorship of the FA WSL – Europe’s first professional women’s football league.​​

Our PR team managed the announcement, negotiated messaging and defined the media strategy with The FA’s press office. ​

Following the success of this launch, Barclays tasked us with kicking off the new season of the Barclays FA WSL in September. ​​

Based on the insight that young girls’ opportunities to play football are limited, we created an integrated campaign to highlight the commitment Barclays and The FA have made to make football accessible to all girls in schools by 2024. ​

We launched an inspiring 60” hero film which follows a passionate young girl observing her male counterparts play the game she loves. The film ran across social, supported by OOH and press. ​

We activated the campaign with consumer PR outreach and sponsorship activations at Stamford Bridge and the Etihad Stadium, who received record-breaking audiences during the season-opening weekend.