Company

When Team GB walked out at the Tokyo 2020 opening ceremony, they were wearing Ben Sherman. Navy Harrington jackets, union stripes on the sleeves and crisp Oxford shirts: a British style label dressing Britain’s best athletes on the biggest stage in sport.

Ben Sherman has been a name in British style since 1963. As an official Team GB supporter, it designed the athletes’ opening and closing ceremony outfits, and launched a Team GB capsule collection so fans could wear a piece of the Games too.

But the Games were unlike any before. With no fans in the stadiums, the Olympics would be followed almost entirely online. So Ben Sherman wanted a digitally led campaign, one that could turn a moment on the world stage into something fans could see, explore and buy from.

Challenge

The content was everywhere. Ben Sherman, Team GB, the athletes and the press were all posting about the outfits and the Games. But it was spread across dozens of channels, each with its own audience, and almost none of it lived on Ben Sherman’s own site.

The obvious way to turn that buzz into sales was paid ads, and that’s a tough sell. The average display ad gets clicked around 0.5% of the time, and 92% of people trust content from real people over branded advertising. Fans were online to follow the Games, not to look at banners. And even when an ad does land, the attention and the data stay with the platform that served it.

What Ben Sherman needed was a home of its own for the campaign: somewhere fans would want to spend time, and where every view, tap and click would show what the sponsorship was really driving. A standard blog post or campaign page wasn’t going to do that. It couldn’t keep up with the pace of the Games, and it didn’t feel big enough for a partnership of this size.

Solution

So Ben Sherman partnered with Amondo to give the campaign a home of its own: The World of Team GB, one Gallery on its UK and US websites, built to feel as premium as the partnership.

Every channel, in one place

The Gallery pulled together posts, Stories and Tweets from Ben Sherman, Team GB, the athletes and their partners, alongside fashion press coverage of the ceremony looks and fans reacting to them.

“We realised that through Amondo’s capabilities, we could pull all the different channels we communicate through together to give a seamless experience to our customers.”

Ann Akiri

VP PR and Communications, Ben Sherman

Behind the scenes, the Amondo platform pulled posts from all of those channels into one searchable place. Amondo’s curation team then worked through it, picking the best moments and keeping the Gallery fresh, moving from weekly updates in the build-up to daily and real-time updates as the Games’ biggest moments happened.

“Working through the WhatsApp channel was really easy. We completed the content brief, and from the minute it launched, the Amondo Gallery looked fantastic. Knowing that there was an expert team handling the curation and supporting us through the project was important.”

Ann Akiri

VP PR and Communications, Ben Sherman

From athlete moment to product page

Fans who loved the ceremony looks were one tap away from owning them. Click-Through Tiles sat inside the Gallery, linking straight to the capsule collection’s product pages.

This is where the content earned its keep. Instead of an ad interrupting the Games, the collection sat right next to the moments fans had come for. A click felt like the natural next step, not a sales pitch.

The same tiles promoted the brand’s “Road to Tokyo 2020” Spotify playlist and its NFT releases, so every part of the campaign had a home in one experience.

A prize draw that built a fanbase

Ben Sherman also ran a prize draw for official opening and closing ceremony items, using Amondo’s Form Tile. Fans entered right inside the Gallery, without leaving the page, and every entry came with their consent. That data came straight to Ben Sherman, not to an ad platform, so it could keep talking to those fans long after the Games were over.

Every interaction, on its own site

Because the Gallery lived on Ben Sherman’s own site, every view, tap and click was tracked, and the data was the brand’s to keep. With owned and partner content side by side, the team could finally compare them and see which moments and sources drove interest, and which drove sales.

Results

The World of Team GB turned Olympic moments into shopping moments. The Gallery’s click-through rate to product pages was 6%, more than 10 times the roughly 0.5% average for display ads. That means fans weren’t just watching the Games, they were heading straight to the collection.

The interaction rate was 59%, meaning more than half of visitors tapped into the content to explore it, rather than scrolling past. Ben Sherman’s web team also saw more traffic to the page and people spending longer on the site.

For Ben Sherman, it proved what the sponsorship was worth in a way ads alone couldn’t: real Team GB moments, on its own site, outperforming paid media, with the numbers to show it.

“A key objective of launching the Amondo Gallery was to create a new, engaging space that felt elevated and looked fresh — and we achieved that. In this era of advanced digital consumerism, where impressions and conversions are business critical, we were extremely pleased with the positive impact achieved using Amondo.”

Ann Akiri

VP PR and Communications, Ben Sherman