Heathrow Express Retains Havas Sports to Promote Rugby Partnerships

Heathrow Express has retained Havas Sports & Entertainment UK (HS&E), sales the UK office of the global brand engagement network of HAVAS, to promote its partnerships with England Sevens, USA Rugby and Premiership Rugby.

HS&E’s key objective is to help position Heathrow Express as a world-class brand and the first choice for business travellers to travel between Heathrow and central London, particularly in overseas markets where rugby sevens is a rapidly growing sport. The agency will be delivering a fully integrated activation strategy including experiential engagement, content creation, social media, digital, PR and CSR. 

As well as managing the company’s England Sevens partnership, a key component of the brief is to promote the partnership between Heathrow Express and USA Rugby. The USA, where rugby is the fastest growing sport, is Heathrow Express’ biggest market outside the UK, with around 10 million Americans forecast to pass through Heathrow Airport in 2014.   

For Heathrow Express, the unique appeal of rugby sevens is that the annual HSBC Sevens World Series is broadcast live to 154 countries with its tournaments taking place in some of its major feeder cities, such as Hong Kong and Dubai. 

Commenting on the appointment, Lucien Boyer, President & Global CEO, Havas Sports & Entertainment, said: “Heathrow Express’ involvement in rugby and in particular sevens comes at a very exciting time as it’s fast, spectator friendly format is the future of the sport. The Commonwealth Games, Rugby World Cup 2015 and the Rio 2016 Olympic Games are all around the corner which gives us a fantastic opportunity to be innovative in rugby. We look forward to helping them take the brand to a global audience in a new and engaging way.” 

Heathrow Express Head of Communications, Simon Evans, added: “We are thrilled to bring on board the enviable creative and strategic firepower of Havas to help us bring our investment in rugby to life, to measure its effectiveness and ultimately to deliver on our principle objective – to get more people to ride our train. We received pitches from a number of leading agencies, and Havas was the clear winner.” 

Havas Sports & Entertainment UK clients include Coca-Cola, The FA, AEG, Sport England and Yahoo!