Manchester Super Giants: Full-Funnel Ticket Sales
When Manchester Super Giants rebranded ahead of a pivotal season in The Hundred, they wanted a Manchester-based agency to rebuild awareness fast and turn it into ticket sales across digital and out-of-home.
Overview.
Manchester Super Giants entered 2026 under a new name. Formerly Manchester Originals, the team rebranded as part of a wider shake-up across The Hundred, as franchises brought in new investment and reasserted their identities.
It was a squad and fanbase with real history, but a brand name fans weren’t yet searching for. With the on-sale window for their 2026 home fixtures at Emirates Old Trafford fast approaching, Manchester Super Giants wanted a Manchester-based agency who could get up to speed quickly, rebuild brand awareness from the ground up, and convert that awareness into ticket sales before a hard deadline.
The England and Wales Cricket Board’s push for a family-first audience, fixtures deliberately scheduled across the school holidays, and marquee entertainment like Rudimental’s halftime show meant that Manchester Super Giants were open to a campaign that welcomed people who didn’t consider themselves cricket fans at all. Embryo took on strategy, paid media, OOH, and audio, working alongside the club’s in-house organic content to bring one consistent story to a full-funnel campaign spanning five channels.
Our strategy.
A full-funnel approach, built to reach and convert.
Rather than treating awareness and conversion as separate problems, Embryo built a single campaign where each channel had a specific job. Out-of-home and audio ran ahead of and alongside the paid push, building broad, citywide reach through pub screens, bus wraps, digital sites and radio and audio placements across Greater Manchester. Paid social, paid search and programmatic display then picked up that primed audience and carried it through to conversion, with retargeting doing the heaviest lifting once awareness had been established.
Growing the fanbase
Every piece of creative was built around building the Manchester Super Giants fanbase: younger families and people looking for a big day out, not just die-hard cricket followers. That meant tailoring messaging, format and tone across channels and audiences, from value-led hospitality offers to fixture-specific urgency messaging, so the campaign felt relevant whether someone was searching for tickets by name or seeing a bus wrap on their commute.
Implementation and creativity.
Testing messaging, not guessing at it.
For the campaign’s marquee creative asset, the Rudimental halftime show, Embryo tested five distinct messaging angles (value, artist, family, group and urgency-led) to establish what actually motivated ticket purchases, rather than relying on a single approach across the whole flight.
Fixture-led urgency, phased to the on-sale deadline.
Creative was rotated by opponent and countdown stage. ‘We’re Back’ messaging built around specific fixtures against Sunrisers Leeds, Trent Rockets, Birmingham Phoenix and Welsh Fire, escalating from two-months-out through to last-few-tickets urgency, with every theme mapped through phased flighting from ‘100 Days To Go’ to ‘Selling Fast’.
Taking the brand to the city.
Out-of-home ran as a concentrated burst into the on-sale deadline, spanning four formats across Greater Manchester. Every single placement over-delivered against its booked plan, giving the new identity real, physical presence in the city right when paid media needed a primed audience to convert.
Thirty-six buses across Manchester’s Bee Network fleet were wrapped in Manchester Super Giants livery for four weeks, turning the city’s own public transport into a rolling, unmissable extension of the campaign.
A dedicated ‘Made For Manchester’ creative concept ran across 22 pub screens citywide — 107 spots over six weeks — putting the new identity in front of fans in the pubs and venues where cricket gets watched. The placement delivered 102% of its booked impression plan.
A one-week takeover of this landmark digital site delivered 221.7% of its booked screen-play plan — more than double what was agreed, and the single biggest over-delivery of the whole campaign.
Running for two weeks on the direct approach to Emirates Old Trafford, this site delivered almost 106% of its booked impression plan, reinforcing the brand right at the point of matchday travel.
The results.
The campaign delivered on both fronts: broad citywide reach and efficient, measurable ticket sales, with paid media returning a strong blended ROAS and out of home and audio consistently over-delivering against their booked plans.
- Delivered a blended ROAS of over 4x across paid social, search and display, backed by thousands of ticket conversions.
- Programmatic display retargeting emerged as the single best-performing tactic in the entire campaign.
- OOH and audio placements over-delivered against every booked plan, in one case reaching more than double the agreed volume.
Blended ROAS across paid media
ROAS from programmatic display
Combined OOH and audio impressions citywide
Ready to see similar results?
If you’re ready to unify your brand identity or make a lasting impact at your next event, let’s talk. Start your growth story with Embryo.
