Study in Wales: The road to India

Study in Wales

The Challenge

India is an ever-growing market for student recruitment but Wales remains a relatively unknown place to study for prospective Indian students. Our client Study in Wales (SiW) tasked us with finding more innovative ways to put Wales on the study destination map.

The idea

Hockey is the 3rd most popular sport in India. The Hockey World Cup was set to take place in January 2023 in Bhubaneshwar, India and for the first time in history, the men’s Wales hockey team had qualified to compete.

Our deep insight showed, students in India recognise Wales in context of sport because of major sporting events like the FIFA World Cup. It also identified many of the Welsh team had studied at Welsh universities and Hockey Wales was looking for a partner to help fund the trip.

All signs posted to a sponsorship opportunity between SiW and Hockey Wales, presenting a huge opportunity to get in front of our India audience – a first for SiW.

We brokered a sponsorship deal to be headline sponsors and developed an integrated campaign around the sponsorship, most notably a visit to India during the tournament to take the Welsh team on press visits to schools.

The impact

UK – eight pieces of coverage / 4,109,848 OTS including ITV Wales News studio interview with players.
India PR – 234 pieces of coverage / over 85 billion OTS
Nine journalists came to the event, securing 95 pieces of coverage – OTS 91,901,243
On the ground event – 7,000 children from 50 schools attended.

Social:

179,786 impressions
6,891 engagements
228 posts
298 click throughs to website
419 new social media followers
Highest engagements from audiences in India
Logo seen on TV across 194 countries to a global audience of over 500 million.
New relationships – five including: India Deputy High Commissioner and communications team, Welsh Government in India team (and Wales in Asia), Doon School, British Council in India and Trinity St David’s team in India / international team in UK.