The National Rugby League, better known as the NRL, is a major Australian sports league that features 16 teams across Australia and New Zealand. NRL matches are played in Australia and New Zealand between March and October. The season culminates in the premiership deciding game, the NRL Grand Final, which is traditionally one of Australia’s most anticipated and popular sporting events.
Prior to the NRL’s season kick off this year, Podean worked with the league to produce a unique spin on an Amazon Store. Conventionally, Amazon stores are created by endemic brands who wish to feature their product range in a central hub. Such stores foster the opportunity for product discovery and brand awareness. Despite NRL not actually selling anything on Amazon, Podean took an innovative approach to creating a store which featured multiple licenced stockists in one centralised place. In addition to the store the NRL engaged in Amazon display advertising to tap into Amazon’s extensive audience insights and promoted the league to a new group of consumers based on interests and purchase profiles.
The NRL brand store consisted of a homepage that promoted the league as a whole and also featured additional, product specific pages for each team. The customer experience for NRL supporters is now more enjoyable and centralised as they were able to source all licensed NRL merchandise in a central location. The store also encouraged licenced stockists to sign on to the platform and take advantage of Amazon’s high traffic.
Although unconventional in its architecture, the store created an opportunity for the NRL to assist advertising products for its licensees whilst simultaneously building awareness and utilising Amazon’s specific audience targeting functions. This new form of advertising gave the NRL the opportunity to reach more than 11 million monthly users on Amazon, off Amazon and on Amazon owned and operated platforms such as IMDB, Twitch, Amazon Prime and Amazon Music.
Podean is proud to be involved with the conception, creation and success of the store and are always on the lookout to apply similar innovative approaches to the Amazon marketplace in the future. You can check out the NRL brand store here.
To learn more about how Podean can help you bring your brand to life on Amazon contact us.