The Hills Hoist was front row and centre at the largest Roller Derby tournament in the Southern Hemisphere - The Great Southern Slam - at the Adelaide Showgrounds during the Queen’s Birthday long weekend.
Thousands of enthusiasts converged in Adelaide to experience the unique contact sport and watch the fast and furious flat track action of 20 leagues from all over Australia and New Zealand.
The all-female amateur sport consists of two competing teams each with five players roller skating around an oval track, scoring points as each team’s “Jammer” makes her way through the scrum of the remaining players, or “Pack”, who help their teammates and impede the opposition, often resulting in spectacular spills, jumps and falls.
In the first-ever tournament of this size to be held in this part of the world, Hills secured extensive naming rights including: the main track and surrounding arena, exhibition hall entrance, penalty box and scoreboard, as well as the Merchandise Village and Message Tree, which invited spectators to write to their favourite teams on a dedicated Hills Hoist of Love!
Brand exposure also included a major product display throughout the venue, including ten of the latest Hills Rotary Hoists, and the Hills logo on all official promotional material, banners and other signage, as well as verbal promotion throughout bouts and their international bout-cast live streaming and Twitter news feed.
The exposure reached 8,000 attendees, in addition to the web link and sports news streaming communications to heartland clothesline demographic target audiences throughout Australia, New Zealand and the USA.
Complementary tickets to the event also allowed Hills’ customers and families to experience Hills’ corporate hospitality and the thrill of Roller Derby in reserved trackside seating, including the rock-inspired skating costumes, rock-band crowd entertainment and creative names of teams such as Ade-ladies, Mile Die Club, and their players like Moe-Skeeto and D’juana Fightme.
Nearly one hundred years since its birth in America in the early 20th Century as a professional mixed-gender sport, Roller Derby is now founded on a grass-roots skater-owned-skater-run philosophy and is seeing a massive revival with over 500 women’s leagues in 16 countries around the world.
With its focus on athleticism, community and sisterhood, Roller Derby provides the ideal avenue for community engagement and platform for Hills Branded Products to reinforce that Hills still provides real, down-to-earth people with quality, dependable everyday products for the home and backyard.