Accolade Wines, the UK’s leading wine company, has announced a £1m investment in a new campaign for Hardys, its No 1 wine brand and the official wine of England Cricket. The campaign will include TV sponsorship, a partnership with Sky, print advertising and prize promotions offering the chance to win cricket tickets and cricket merchandise.

The Rules According to Hardys puts the UK’s most trusted wine brand at the heart of family life with a warm and engaging theme about the different rules and quirks around families and the game of cricket.

The Hardys campaign will feature heavily during the cricket season including TV sponsorship of Channel 5 Cricket Highlights, which reaches 10.4m adults, a partnership with SkySports.com and cricket print media advertising. There will be a strong brand presence in England cricket grounds across the UK with perimeter boards, promotional activity and branded bars.

Hardys will be promoted in both the on- and off-trade including gondola ends, summer seasonal aisles and competitions to win cricket tickets and related branded products to drive awareness and purchase at point of purchase.

David White, Marketing Director for Accolade Wines, says: “We have consistently invested in Hardys sponsorship of the England cricket team over the last few years and now established our credentials as a long term supporter of English cricket. We are confident that this new campaign, The Rules According to Hardys, will connect with our consumers by raising a smile at the quirky ways British families interpret the rules and enjoy time together, especially when playing cricket.”

The campaign will extend to Hardys social channels through a partnership with the England and Wales Cricket Board to create a series of posts revealing the quirky personal family rules of those that grew up around the game.

The Hardys brand, with retail sales worth in excess of £275m a year, will also front a search to celebrate the unsung heroes of local grassroots crickets, and will be revealing its support for some unusual cricket traditions during the season.

Accolade Wines, which owns the Hardys brand, is a major global wine business based in Australia. It began as Thomas Hardy and Sons, founded in 1853, and now has operations in North America, the United Kingdom, Ireland, mainland Europe, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Asia. At the beginning of April 2018, US private equity firm The Carlyle Group bought Accolade for Aus $1bn. The sellers were Australian private equity firm Champ, which owned 80% of the business, and US alcohol group Constellation, which owned the remaining 20%.

Accolade’s Echo Falls brand recently signed up as the drinks partner of what is likely to be the summer’s hottest TV show, Love Island 2018, on ITV2, and will be offering the chance to win tickets to the live Love Island final.

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UK consumers are being offered the chance to win a trip for four adults to watch a top Australian domestic cricket match at the famous Melbourne Cricket Ground, courtesy of Foster’s beer, the Official Lager of the England and Wales Cricket Board.

The trip includes flights, the match tickets and accommodation for seven nights in a 4* hotel.

There are also hundreds of instant win prizes including pairs of England NatWest International T20 or Royal London One-Day International match tickets, England Cricket Adidas polo shirts, cricket kits (including cricket bat, wickets and ball) and Foster’s branded sports shirts.

To enter, consumers outside Northern Ireland have to buy a promotional multipack of Foster’s cans, and then input a seventeen digit alphanumeric code found on the cardboard outer on the relevant page on the Foster’s website. There is a No Purchase Necessary entry route for Northern Irish consumers. People can enter once a day and 20 times maximum over the course of the promotion, but have to have a new code every time they enter. The competition started at the end of August and runs until December 31^st 2016.

The prizes must be taken in December 2017 or January 2018 – the exact times will depend on when relevant fixtures are being played in Melbourne.

Craig Clarkson, Off-Trade and Category Director at Heineken, says: “The promotion offers shoppers the chance to win fantastic prizes to experience the Australian spirit and can-do attitude of the brand. Building on the visibility that Foster’s has achieved throughout the summer, these packs will drive sales of one of the UK’s best-selling lagers.”

Heineken employs around 2,000 people in the UK and is Britain’s leading cider and beer business. It owns around 1,250 pubs through its Star Pubs & Bars business and its brand portfolio includes Foster’s, Heineken, Strongbow, Desperados, Kronenbourg1664, John Smith’s and Bulmers, plus a full range of niche and speciality brands.

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