Harlequins v Exeter Chiefs Awareness Campaign

A single Gallagher Premiership fixture is a fixed moment with a fixed catchment. Every pound of media had to work toward one outcome — matchday awareness and ticket sales across South West London in the weeks before kick-off at The Stoop. That demanded reach and frequency at efficiency, not scale for its own sake.

R4 assembled and traded a multi-format digital estate — 73 screens across six environments — and held suppliers to verified delivery, converting the buy into measurable over-performance for the club.

The Trade stage delivered

73 screens across 6 complementary formats negotiated as a single, efficient programme rather than a collection of disconnected sites

A large-format digital network that over-delivered to 137% of planned plays, confirmed against supplier data — significant additional exposure at no extra cost to the club

A social-environment 6-sheet network secured with 2 bonus days at no additional cost, extending the campaign into matchday week

Every format reconciled against supplier-confirmed volumes for full delivery compliance

Value won, not assumed — and verified at every stage.

Engineering the audience

The plan was built on behavioural qualification, not broad demographic targeting. The Harlequins v Exeter Chiefs fixture draws a defined, local audience — so rather than chase headline reach, R4 set out to intercept the people most predisposed to attend, across the environments they move through every day.

Using Experian Mosaic segmentation and ROUTE data, the campaign was indexed to South West London's primary rugby catchment and mapped to the moments when matchday decisions are actually made.

The Plan stage focused on

Behavioural targeting over demographics — prioritising audiences that over-index for live sport attendance, weekend leisure planning and social-occasion spend

High-index Experian Mosaic groups — Rental Hubs (younger, socially active adults), Domestic Success (established local families with strong community-sport affinity) and Prestige Positions (affluent, leisure-active audiences already engaged with premium sport)

A tightly drawn geography — concentrated across the TW, KT and SW postcodes surrounding The Stoop, where the target audience is disproportionately clustered

Moment mapping — placing the fixture across commute, gym, shopping and social occasions: the touchpoints where live sport naturally enters consideration, and matchday plans are formed

Every placement was selected on audience alignment, environmental relevance and proximity to the fixture catchment.

The programme went live from 24 April to 7 May 2026, combining high-impact roadside dominance with targeted venue, leisure and social environments — so Harlequins maintained visibility across every stage of the audience's day.

The media architecture spanned six formats

Digital 48-Sheets — 9 large-format sites across Kingston, Richmond, Clapham Junction and Brentford, commanding attention at speed on the area's most-travelled arterial routes (the network that over-delivered to 137% of plan)

Digital Mega 6-Sheets — paired inbound/outbound screens on Upper Richmond Road, delivering head-on visibility across repeated daily journeys through the heart of the catchment

Digital Adshel 6-Sheets — 20 screens across town centres and commuter routes in Kingston, Esher, Cobham, Walton-on-Thames, Weybridge, Twickenham and Staines, building frequency through the local sporting calendar

Social Digital 6-Sheets — 20 screens across 12 high-footfall social locations from Twickenham and Kingston to Brixton, Streatham, Fulham, Battersea and Wimbledon, reaching audiences in the unplanned social windows when matchday decisions are made

Leisure 6-Sheets — 8 screens in PureGym and David Lloyd environments, aligning gym-going routine with leisure and matchday planning

Venue screens — 15 digital screens inside key pubs and bars in Twickenham, Richmond and Staines, embedding the fixture directly within Harlequins matchday culture with long dwell time and repeat exposure

The campaign delivered

73 screens across 6 formats

1,239,167 combined reach at an average frequency of 6.3

7,770,001 impacts delivered over the 14-day window

A large-format network that over-delivered to 137% of booked plays, plus 2 bonus social-network days at no cost

In line with R4's Trade | Plan | Activate governance framework, delivery was never reliant on projected modelling. Every format was reconciled against supplier-confirmed volumes and independently validated in-market for copy integrity, screen functionality, rotation compliance and booked-volume accuracy — confirming a multi-format, environment-led execution model that is operationally robust, commercially disciplined and built to deliver with full verification and accountability at every stage.

Place the club at the centre of daily life across the catchment. Build familiarity. Drive matchday.