For many years, the LA Galaxy Post-Season Tour has been a very successful platform to connect the LA Galaxy players and technical staff with our Distributors and soccer-fans alike, both in the United States and abroad. The post-season tours not only have a strong corporate social responsibility component, that included visits and donations to Casa Herbalife programs, but they were also an effective way of training our Distributors on the benefits/potential of sports nutrition and on how they could promote Herbalife24 to build their business. With the ongoing pandemic and all the travel bans in place, we had to be innovative! So, we started thinking, “If the Galaxy can’t visit the Distributors (and soccer fans) how can we bring the Distributors and fans to the Galaxy?”
Introducing the LA Galaxy Augmented Reality (AR) Tour! An immersive 360 AR fan experience – a first for a Major League Soccer (MLS) team - that gave unprecedented access to exclusive areas of the Galaxy stadium.
For the first time, visitors could enter the player’s lounge (where the visitors could learn the benefits of sports nutrition from Dr. Dana Ryan, Director, Sports Performance, Nutrition & Education), team locker room, Champions Lounge, and even take the field and participate in an “Average Joe’s vs. Pro’s” interactive soccer match, that matched Herbalife Distributors and staff against Galaxy players Efrain Alvarez, Julian Araujo, Joe Corona, Sacha Kljestan, and Ethan Zubak.
Once we had the key piece, we started building a comprehensive communication and creative strategy, that led to a campaign with two major marketing goals:
Just like the AR experience, the campaign to promote it was equally 360-degree in its scope and tactics, and the entire Herbalife Nutrition communication ecosystem was leveraged to increase the awareness across audiences and channels. This meant, that from our own digital properties like MyHerbalife.com to our North America Social Media channels (Facebook and Instagram), we left no stone unturned. The AR experience was not the only piece of technology we used. We also leveraged other tools in our tech stack, like Ceros to create interactive content, and Salesforce for email journeys.
A concerted effort between Herbalife Nutrition’s Public Relations (PR) team and the LA Galaxy communications team also helped spark the media interest and reach a broader audience, which boosted the results of this awareness campaign exponentially.
Lastly, we not only promoted the Herbalife24 products, we also gave Distributors the opportunity to purchase them, and we created a LA Galaxy Product Pack, that consisted of eight different products, from Liftoff to Herbalife24 Rebuild Strength.
The LA Galaxy Augmented Reality Tour campaign far exceeded its goals, both in building brand awareness and driving engagement:
The experience – the first of its kind for an MLS team – sparked high interest in the media, which helped further boost the awareness and reach of the campaign
Lastly, the buzz generated by the campaign also converted into sales results.
