Turning matchday loyalty into life-changing chances.
When an audience already trusts you, the work isn’t persuasion. It’s making the ask easy enough to say yes to.
Context
MFC Foundation runs programmes across the North East supporting young people and adults who don't always get a fair start. The club's badge already carried decades of trust. The job was turning that trust into pound-for-pound support at the till.
Challenge
A round-to-the-pound scheme lives or dies at the point of sale, in the few seconds between scanning a pint of milk and paying. It had to be instantly readable and impossible to miss, without ever feeling like a guilt trip.
Approach
One roundel. The club crest and "Round to the Pound" set in gold on Boro red, applied everywhere the ask actually happens: till screens, storefront windows, pin badges, stickers.
Round to the Pound
A simple ask wherever the till already was: round your change up to the nearest pound for the Foundation. The roundel had to work shrunk onto a five-inch checkout screen and blown up across a shopfront window, so it stayed one shape, one mark, everywhere it landed.
Roary's Rewards
A loyalty scheme built for the club's youngest fans. Collect stickers across a season, work up through Red, Gold and Platinum, and see it happening on the sheet without anyone needing to explain the rules. The mascot did the talking, so the tiers never needed instructions.
Friends of the Foundation
A membership scheme for local businesses, pitched as three tiers rather than one flat ask: Captain's, Manager's and Chairman's packages, each with its own return laid out plainly on the page. A framed certificate and a bi-fold leaflet did the work a sales call usually has to.
Table Toppers
A £50 voucher for being crowned an Attendance Champion, redeemable at Psyche on Linthorpe Road. Its own mark, kept separate from the club crest, so it read as a genuine prize rather than another piece of MFC merchandise.
For you
People already trust you and still aren’t acting?
When trust isn’t the barrier, persuasion is wasted effort. The job becomes making the ask small enough and clear enough that saying yes takes no thought at all.
Campaign work like this suits organisations who already have an audience. If you’re still building one, the naming and identity projects are closer to your situation.